HOW DOES THE 

DEATH OF 
CHRIST SAVE US? 



HiiRY C.MABIE.D.a 




Class _JBX^iA^ 

Book_ > K^"^ 

Goppght>j° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HOW DOES THE 

DEATH OF 
CHRIST SAVE US? 



"The hands upon that cruel tree, 
Extended wide as mercy's span, 
Have gathered to the Son of man 
The ages past and yet to be. 

One, reaching backward to the prime, 
Enfolds the children of the morn; 
The other, to a race unborn 

Extends the crowning gift of time ! " 



HOW DOES THE 

DEATH OF 
CHRIST SAVE US? 



OR 

THE ETHICAL ENERGY 
OF THE CROSS 

By 
HENRY C. MABIE, D. D. 



Being ready always to give answer 
to every man that asketh you a 
reason concerning the hope that is 
in you, yet with meekness and fear, 
I Peter 3 : 13, 



Philadelphia 

American paptiieit ^ubltcatton ^octetp 

Boston Chicago Atlanta 

New York St. Louis Dallas 



2>Tew5' 



b3 



LIBRARY of GOWajiiESS 
Two Copies Heceivoti 

JUN 4 BOS 



Copyright 1908 by the 
Ambrican Baptist Publication Society 



Published April, 1908 



jfrom tbe Soclcti2'0 own f^ress 



Contente 



CHAPTER FAGB 

I A Question of Questions 7 

II The Salvation Embraced in the 

Forgiveness of Sin 12 

III The Centrality of Christ's Death 

IN Salvation , 22 

IV The Nature of Christ's Death . . 27 
V The Death Voluntary 31 

VI The Death More than Physical . 38 

VII The Death Involved the Resurrec- 
tion 47 

VIII The Death Involved the Ascension 
AND the Divine Enduement of 
Power 63 

IX The Death Implied a New Vital 

Union with Christ 72 

X The Death Implied the Renewal 
of the Cosmos 82 

XI The Ethical Values of the Atone- 
ment 87 

XII The Church's One Foundation . . 92 

XIII The Sin of Contempt of Grace . . 99 

[5] 



[6] Contentg 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV The Power of the Cross not Out- 
worn 103 

XV Redemption and Stewardship . .106 

XVI Redemption Recovering from 

Criminality 109 

XVII Redemption Overcoming Heathen- 
ism 114 

XVIII The Sovereignty of Saviourhood 120 

XIX Japanese Trophies of the Cross . 126 

XX Power of the Cross Over a Hindu 

Mob 130 

XXI Testimony of Dr. Griffith John 

OF China 137 

XXII The Cross the Soul's Last Re- 
source 142 



Appendix A The Atonement an Achieve- 
ment . 146 

Appendix B The Point of View of the 

Apostolic Testimony 150 

Appendix C God a Sufferer 153 

Appendix D A Penal Element in Christ* s 

Death 154 

Appendix E The Offense of the Cross 156 

Appendix F Falling Toward the Cross 158 



How Does The Death 
Of Christ Save Us ? 



H (Sluestfon of (Questions 

NOT long since a friend of the writer 
propounded the above question to a 
theologian of repute. The answer returned 
was so hesitant and confused as to surprise 
and disappoint the querist. The difficulty 
impHed in the question has perplexed many 
minds. 

In the recent book, " The Heart of the 
Gospel/' by Dr. James M. Campbell, the au- 
thor has this reference to the so-called 
" Moral Influence View " of the atonement, 
as set forth by the late Prof. Geo. B. Stev- 
ens, D. D., of Yale Theological Seminary: 
** The main thing lacking in the view is that 
it does not show how the work of Christ is 
so related to sin as to be made effective to 
salvation, nor does it tap the deep fountain 

[7] 



[8] How g)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

of motive from which the moral influence of 
the Saviour's influence springs. It predi- 
cates an effect without an adequate cause." 
And yet this " Moral Influence View " of 
the atonement is supposed by many to re- 
duce to a minimum the difficulties in the ra- 
tionale of the atonement — a conception with 
which the present writer finds himself un- 
able to agree. 

The question of the method of salvation 
deserves a better answer than is commonly 
given to it; and certainly an answer that 
does not destroy the atonement. Indeed 
such an answer must be given, if the evan- 
gelical faith is to stand, if our rational hold 
on the grounds of salvation is to be main- 
tained, and if we are to strengthen the faith 
of others. It cannot be, that that Cross 
which is declared to be *' the wisdom of 
God," will not commend itself as wise in the 
method of its working, as well as effective 
in power, to a spiritually taught insight. The 
way of salvation must be supremely rational. 
Customary as it is for many to say that they 



of Cbrtgt Save JSis I [9] 

have *' no theory '' of the atonement, yet all 
men who think about it at all, do have some 
theory, whether they intelligibly define it or 
not. This habit of speaking of having " no 
theory " on the subject, while holding to the 
saving value in the fact of Christ's death, 
is the fashion of the hour. Sometimes it 
would appear to be an unoffending way of 
bowing out of the court elements embraced 
in a Bible view of the subject which some 
hesitate to acknowledge, and yet which 
they do not quite have the frankness to dis- 
claim. Doubtless some are in suspense what 
to believe. 

In the following pages I shall attempt an 
answer to the question, " How does the 
death of Christ save us ? " The difficulty in 
the case is to show the ethical energy resi- 
dent in Christ's death as it takes effect upon 
us : to show how the work accomplished in 
the death of Christ is so related to sin — ^to 
our sin — as to become effective to our sal- 
vation: so as to engender motive and im- 
part dynamic to ultimate holiness of life. 



[lo] Mow Boeg tbe 2)eatb 

Doubtless to most Bible-believing Chris- 
tians, it is enough that the Bible teaches, as 
assuredly it does, that the death of Christ 
in some way saves. Such do not care to go 
behind the simple fact. For them, unvexed 
by speculative questions, this may be well. 
In the case of others, however, in whom 
doubts have arisen, and who yearn for a 
definite intellectual basis for their belief, it 
is important that the grounds in a matter so 
central be pointed out. 

While none can hope fully to explain the 
relation of an event so transcendent as the 
death of Christ to human salvation, yet we 
believe that it can be so cleared of some con- 
fusions that have attached themselves to it, 
as greatly to simplify the matter. Souls 
earnest and thoughtful enough to raise the 
question deserve all the help possible to its 
answer ; while any hesitation to attempt that 
answer, on the part of one interrogated, both 
betrays feebleness of grasp on the realities 
of salvation and causes the weak to stumble. 

At the very root of the difficulty implied 



of Cbriat Save Tas? [n] 

in the question is a confused understanding 
of the terms employed. Neither what the 
death is, nor what " save " means is clear. 
The term " save," or salvation, first needs 
to be explained. Salvation may signify the 
work of justification merely, wherein we are 
forgiven through the redemptive sacrifice 
of Christ; it may mean salvation in the 
more vital sense of a renewed inner life; 
or it may comprehend the full fact of sal- 
vation, embracing that of body, soul, and 
spirit, the full life-career, and the renewal 
of the cosmos, of which we form a part 
from our creation to the final consumma- 
tion. Salvation is a large word. It im- 
plies being recovered from certain lower re- 
lations and being instated in certain other 
and higher relations. It is a question also 
of personal relationship to other personali- 
ties in this universe — personalities divine, 
human, and satanic. 

At this point, therefore, it is important to 
clear understanding, that we should speak 
of that initial salvation which on the ground 



[i2] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

of Christ's death is embraced in the pro- 
vision for the forgiveness of sin. 



11 

Ube Salvation ]Embrace& In tbc 
forgiveness ot Sin 

FROM the beginning of the Christian 
era, the death of Christ has been be- 
lieved to be fundamentally related to the 
moral possibility of justification and for- 
giveness of sin on the part of a holy God. 
Throughout the Scriptures this is also 
uniformly implied. The death of Christ has 
never been taught by representative evan- 
gelicals to be necessary to secure a disposi- 
tion in God to save, that is, to make God 
willing to save. It is rather because of deep 
willingness eternal in the very nature of 
God, that he provided to give his Son so 
that he might righteously forgive. 

The moment we see this in God, another 
step in thought easily follows ; namely this, 



of Cbrigt Save Tag? [13] 

that the atonement death as timeless in 
God's heart and purpose, rendered divine 
forgiveness a potential reality, even ante- 
cedent to man's experience of it. Of 
course, this forgiveness could not go into 
effect or become a conscious realization in 
any until believed and voluntarily appropri- 
ated. From God's point of view, however, 
every sinner in principle — in his moral 
status — is forgiven from the beginning, and 
the basis of the fact is, that God, in Christ 
from eternity himself became responsible for 
the foreknown sin of man whom he was to 
create. An amnesty was proclaimed, Uke 
that at the close of the Sepoy rebellion in 
India, or like that at the end of our late 
Civil War, in which the government prom- 
ised a full and free pardon in advance of 
the cessation of opposition to the govern- 
ment's authority. On account of God's 
work in Christ he provided, and in various 
ways proclaimed pardon for all who would 
receive it. In this view the world is a for- 
given world, whether it knows it or not. 



[i4] Mow 2)oes tbe 2)eatb 

Alas, in large part it does not know it, and 
where it knows it it is slow to believe it. 
Yet it is forgiven in such a way as in the 
end impliedly commits it to subjective per- 
sonal holiness. For in justification the be- 
liever is treated as righteous, as Doctor Du- 
Bose has said, " Not on the ground of being 
righteous, but on the ground of a certain 
relation of faith to Christ's righteousness 
upon which is laid the chief emphasis in St. 
Paul's system." And to quote Prof. Ernest 
D. Burton, " Such faith in itself is incipient 
and germinal righteousness, since it is God's 
will that man shall exercise faith toward 
him; it contained also the promise and po- 
tency of complete and actual righteousness, 
since it is the opening of the soul to God, 
through which God enters never to depart, 
and never to give over his work until it is 
complete." Doubtless, the implied commit- 
tal of the justified one to a sanctified life, 
is the chief reason why mankind is so slow 
to accept forgiveness and especially to seek 
it. Evangelical justification, which indeed 



ot Cbrist Save TUg? [is] 

is a deeper matter than mere forgiveness, 
has for its corollary a new voluntary sanc- 
tification. Such a sanctification (whether it 
be considered as a judicial setting apart to 
be the obedient subject of Christ, or a pro- 
gressive process of conformity to the will 
of Christ) is impliedly to be entered upon 
in the spirit of self-renunciation to Christ, 
the master of the ransomed life. 

Such a cost many are unwilling to pay. 
Yet this cost in a life of self-crucifixion and 
chastening is the only hope man has for 
undoing the mischief of his sin, and regain- 
ing the new spontaneous righteousness, 
which the Holy Spirit yearns to make pos- 
sible within him. " And every man that • 
hath this hope set on him, purifieth himself, 
even as he is pure " (i John 3:3). Thus 
upon the divine side, the atonement bore 
upon God's being first, long before it ever 
took effect upon any man, to bring him on 
his own side, into personal at-one-ment with 
God. God on his own behalf made propitia- 
tion — though not in the pagan sense of that 



[i6] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

term — ^to himself, in a self-consistent way, 
and proclaimed abroad his universal am- 
nesty. He himself through self-sacrifice re- 
moved all the disabilities on his own part to 
the salvation of man. The justification and 
forgiveness then are based upon God's own 
act in that unique death of himself in Christ 
which he tasted. 

It has been a great misfortune to the 
cause of evangelical truth that in that class 
of representations made, for example, in 
Edwards' famous sermon on '' Sinners in 
the Hands of an Angry God," a distinction 
was not made between God's state of being 
as a whole, and a mere relation of that being 
on one side of it, that which is oflfended by 
man's sin. Edwards depicts in a purely one- 
sided way the manner in which because of 
his sin, man stands exposed to the perils of 
retribution, a retribution most luridly de- 
scribed. He says that nothing but " the ar- 
bitrary will of God," '' His sovereign pleas- 
ure restrained by no obligation," stands be- 
tween God and the sinner's instant sliding 



of Cbriat Save xaa? [17] 

into hell. In a certain aspect of Edwards' 
thought he is correct, namely in this respect : 
that so far as the bearing on sinners of the 
relation of holiness alone in God is con- 
cerned, judgment must be conceived as im- 
pending. If that were all there is in God, 
Edwards would have been justified in his 
position. But that is not all there is in 
God. Edwards, in that famous sermon, 
whatever his motive for it was, left out of 
view an important part of God. There is 
another relation in God, namely, his divine 
graciousness, which is just as real as his 
holiness. In this relation God himself has 
become responsible for man's sin and guilt. 
This being so, sinners are just as truly in 
the hands of the eternally gracious God; 
and every soul under the merciful aegis of 
his potential redemption is momentarily 
privileged if he will, to fall into the bosom 
of God, and become a saved being. What 
holds back the sinner from perdition is not 
mere " arbitrary will " in God, but the gra- 
cious restraints of clemency and long-suffer- 



[i8] Mow WocB tbe Beatb 

ing endurance, which have so profoundly 
expressed themselves in the work of Christ's 
cross. With measureless long-suffering, 
God waits for the sinner to respond to that. 
At this point the sacrificial work of God-in- 
Christ ^ enters, constraining as well as mak- 
ing consistent and possible salvation. It is 
here that the cross of Christ, in an important 
respect, becomes the reconciliation — the rec- 
onciliation of variant relationships in God, 
which Edwards' sermon fails to bring out. 
It is here also, that in a deep sense, there is 
effected, personally, a reconciHation between 
God and the sinner. It is here that judg- 
ment needs to be expressed, and is ex- 
pressed, so that the conscience of the peni- 
tent sinner may find rest. So judgment here 
also becomes grace, the only grace the Bible 
promises ; and this is salvation. 

In this work of Christ's cross, God shows 
his righteousness (Rom. 3 : 25). He con- 
demns sin, shows that he is not indifferent 

^ It will be observed that throughout this discussion 
every aspect of the saving work of Christ is represented 
as the work of God-in-Christ. 



of gbrist Save Tfls? [19] 

to sin — does not legitimize sin — rescues the 
sinner, and upholds the majesty of the di- 
vine law. In order then that the state of 
God's whole being, as opposed to a mere 
relation in God, may appear, he needs to be 
seen indeed in his relation to the just con- 
demnation of sin, but also in the exhibition 
of his supreme graciousness, and in the sac- 
rificial work of his cross, wherein the recon- 
ciliation of things antagonistic is effected. 

Such a synthesis of relations is necessary 
in thought, in order that we may grasp the 
kind of God we have, and the kind of a 
moral order under which we live. This is a 
potentially redeemed universe. >This world, 
since the work of Christ has been enacted in 
it, is a forgiven world, so far at least as 
God is concerned. But the world needs to 
know it, to know also the grounds on which 
it has become such; and it needs to be 
brought under its spell. Coming under this 
spell, it shortly realizes not only the fact that 
it is saved, but also how it is saved; and 
it can give an intelligent account of it. 



[2o] Mow 2)oe8 tbe 2)eatb 

In this light the question, " How can the 
death of Christ save ? " becomes equivalent 
to the question, " How can God be a sacri- 
ficial God, a loving God, in the deep sense 
that he can deal savingly with our sin and 
guilt? There are no greater intrinsic diffi- 
culties in thus thinking of God as self-sacri- 
ficing, than in thinking of God as creative, 
or as existing in any other way. Besides, 
a sacrificial God is exactly the kind of God 
that appeals to our need and hope. If God 
can be at all, he can if he will be a sacrifi- 
cial being, can incarnate himself in his Son, 
can endure atoning suffering, and to save 
us. " Yea, Father, for so it was pleasing in 
thy sight" (Matt, ii : 26). 

Of course it would be vain to talk of sal- 
vation in any further sense, did we not 
first recognize that man as a transgressor 
can be righteously forgiven. This forgive- 
ness is the first step in salvation, and is basal 
to all subsequent steps. It is here that the 
justification of the sinner on the grounds of 
Christ's atoning death, is directly related to 



ot Cbrist Saye Tag? [21] 

forgiveness, and vice versa. This great 
event of forgiveness as connected with God's 
justifying grace, is wholly God's act, an act 
predetermined as a judicial transaction, 
showing forth divine righteousness, and oc- 
curring " once for all " in the history of re- 
demption. It presupposes a penitent re- 
sponse on man's part. At this point, and in 
this sense, salvation is entirely of grace: it 
stands a work by itself, alone in kind, a di- 
vine achievement.^ Salvation, however, in 
this initial sense is but partial, if it stops 
there because, as Dr. W. P. DuBose in his 
remarkable discussion on the " Gospel ac- 
cording to St. Paul " has wisely said : " The 
response of the gospel to the human sense 
of actual sin and unattainable holiness is 
not the half grace of forgiveness, but the 
whole grace of redemption and deliverance." 
It is a great moment in the life of the soul 
when it realizes salvation in the sense of for- 
giveness, when, as Doctor DuBose again says, 
*'in one ecstatic sweep of vision, it beholds all 

* See appendix A. 



[22] How 2)oes tbe 2)eatb 

God become human, his own righteousness 
and Hfe." It is such a moment of immediate 
crisis of thought that St. Paul was contem- 
plating in his discussion of justification in 
the Epistle to the Romans that makes him 
appear at a certain stage and phase of his 
discussion to consider forgiveness alone as 
the whole gospel. And yet this was not the 
whole gospel in the thought of Paul. Sal- 
vation in the sense of justification and for- 
giveness has its corollaries, as we shall point 
out that we may see what is meant by sal- 
vation in its more composite and extended 
sense. 

mil 

Zbc CcntralitB of Cbrist's Dcatb 
in Salvation 

BUT if the Scriptures make plain that 
salvation is wholly a matter of grace, 
it is just as clear that in a broad understand- 
ing of the term, the death of Christ in Scrip- 
ture is made the ground of that salvation. 



ot gbrist Save ms t [23] 

Observe how explicit the affirmations are. 
At the beginning of his pubHc ministry, at 
the cleansing of the temple, Jesus said, " De- 
stroy this temple — referring to the temple of 
his body — and in three days I will raise it 
up" (John 2 : 19), indicating that even 
then his eye was clearly upon his coming 
death. Later, he explicitly says, " The Son 
of man came not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister, and to give his life a ransom 
for many" (Matt. 26 : 28). "The good 
Shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep " 
(John 10 : 11). "And I, if I be Hfted up 
from the earth, will draw all unto myself," 
to which John adds the striking comment, 
" This he said, signifying by what manner 
of death he should die" (John 12 : 32). 
The consistency with which Christ was ever 
referring to his " hour," proves that his eye 
was steadily fixed upon his death, in some 
understanding of the word, as the proximate 
goal of his earthly life. True, Jesus in talk- 
ing with his disciples nowhere entered upon 
any formal discussion of his death as aton- 



[24] IHow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

ing; for the event was to be better ex- 
plained after its enactment than before. 
Hence also, when in the light of Pentecost, 
its real place and importance were seen, then 
the apostles were prepared to dwell upon it 
understandingly, and to set it forth ad- 
visedly. 

In the accounts given in the four Gospels, 
all written several decades after Pentecost, 
the evangelists together give more than one- 
fourth of the space to the narrative even of 
the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the 
many discourses of the Acts (a score or so 
of them), the resurrection is the central 
note. It is such because it was seen to be 
first, the seal of God's acceptance of the 
sacrificial death, even of '' Him that was 
crucified '' ; and because secondly, it was 
seen to be the vital outcome of such a death 
as Jesus died.^ 

In St. Paul's thought, throughout his 
Epistles, the saving power is always lodged 
in the Cross. Paul's gospel was " the word 

^ See appendix B. 



ot Cbrtet Save Tftg? [^s] 

of the cross" (2 Cor. 5 : 21). When he 
refers to the pre-crucifixion life of Christ, 
it is in order to lead up to his risen Ufe — 
that Hfe which sprang out of the atonement- 
dying and blossomed into resurrection, the 
Hfe which Christ now Hves at the right hand 
of God. This Hfe it was which formed itself 
within the apostle, and continues to form 
itself in aH beHevers, " the hope of glory." 
And this death of Christ, in the Scriptures, 
is always connected with salvation. He 
" died for our sins " (i Cor. 14 : 3). " For 
if while we were enemies we were recon- 
ciled to God through the death of his Son, 
much more being reconciled, shall we be 
saved by (or in) his Hfe" (Rom. 5 : 10). 
It is by the blood of Christ, regarded as the 
symbol of the extremeness of his dying, that 
we are justified, and have " the remission of 
sins" (i Cor. 14 : 3). In short, the death 
of Christ with its implications is the ground 
of all Paul's hopes as a Christian man, and 
the sum and substance of his message to the 
world. 



[26] Mow 2)oeg tbe jPeatb 

The author of the Epistle to the He- 
brews epitomizes the intent of the incarna- 
tion in this most expUcit declaration : ** That 
through death he might bring to naught 
him that had the power of death, that is the 
devil, and might deliver all them who 
through fear of death, were all their life- 
time subject to bondage " (Heb. 2 : 14, 15). 

The Apocalypse, in what Dr. James M. 
Campbell has called " a flash-light view of 
the new age of kingly power about to open," 
exhibits at the very center of this kingdom, 
and on its throne " a Lamb standing as 
though he had been slain" (5 : 6), but 
who impliedly is alive again, and is now 
lion-like in kingly power. The whole com- 
pany of those who have become members 
of that kingdom are described as " those 
who have washed their robes and made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb " 

(7 : 14). 

Indeed, the fact, the principle, and the 
potency of the sacrificial work of God-in- 
Christ are so woven into the whole warp 



ot Cbtiat Save lag? [27] 

and woof of the New Testament — aye, and 
of the Old also — that they cannot be taken 
out of either without destroying the fabric. 
But there are deep reasons also why the 
death of Christ is so central a thing in 
Scripture. The death itself is of such a 
nature — it stands in such relation to the 
results to be effected — that its characteris- 
tic elements in themselves considered, are 
adapted to secure the reconstitution of the 
soul in God. 



w 

Zbc mature of CbtisVe Deatb 

IF we cannot be satisfied with a narrow 
view of salvation, neither can we justly 
entertain a crude and narrow conception of 
the death of Christ, which in the Scriptures 
is correlated with it. The nature of this 
death now needs to be shown, and its ade- 
quacy to the production of the moral result 
contemplated made clear. For so profound 



[28] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

an effect as salvation in the larger sense 
there must be an adequate cause. 

The notion commonly obtaining of 
Christ's death, is that it was mere mortal 
dying, the dissolution resulting from cru- 
cifixion wounds — such a death as any mere 
martyr might die under similar pains. If 
indeed this were all, or were main features 
in Christ's death, we should not wonder that 
men have failed to see an ethical bearing of 
such a death on ethical beings. One nat- 
urally asks, " How can the mortal dying of 
another individual outside one's self avail 
for his immortal salvation ? " It is an at- 
tempt to relate a physical event to a spiritual 
state. There may be a nexus somewhere, 
but it is not obvious. The difficulty in such 
a conception, bears with special force 
against the sufficiency of the " Moral Influ- 
ence View " of the atonement, as referred to 
before in the quotation of Doctor Campbell. 
He says of the view in question, " It does 
not show how the work of Christ is so re- 
lated to sin as to be made effective to salva- 



ot Cbrist Save xas? [29] 

tion. It predicates an effect without an 
adequate cause." 

But this objection is equally valid against 
any view of the atonement which assumes 
that the death of Christ was primarily his 
physical dying. And for aught that I can 
discover to the contrary, in his recent book, 
this would seem to be Doctor Campbell's 
own view of that death. Such a mere phys- 
ical death could not have held within it a 
potency organically necessitating the resur- 
rection; and therefore there could not be 
discernible in it any rational basis on which 
the ethical sense could predicate an ethical, 
causal relation between the death and the sal- 
vation. At any rate, the influence conveyed 
by the objective suffering of Jesus as thus 
conceived, would be impressional, and could 
only be sympathetically rather than vitally 
related to the beholder. On the supposi- 
tion of the deeper death, which a little later 
we shall predicate of Jesus, we provide for 
organic, vital power in that death — a death 
of which Christ " could not be holden," 



[3o] Mow 2)oe8 tbe 2)eatb 

which through its correlative resurrection 
has the power to reproduce its activities and 
energies in all on whom it lays hold. While 
in the first analysis this death is vicarious, 
it is also vital as well as ethical. For so pro- 
found an effect there is an adequate cause. 

But the difficulty for some is even deeper 
than that expressed by Doctor Campbell. 
Some are unable to see any ethical connec- 
tion between the tragical, criminal execution 
of Jesus at the hands of evil men and one's 
moral renewal. They reason, '' No mere 
criminality can morally avail for another's 
redemption from sin; no martyr, however 
worthy, can be a Saviour, except as he may 
be a paltern for another in some similar 
crisis of his life.'' They see that Christ is 
a prophet, a teacher, even a leader, but not 
a Saviour. Tnese difficulties are real ones, 
and they deserve candid consideration. 

But on the part of those even, who have 
not felt their seriousness, we fear it has not 
been sufficiently recognized that the difficul- 
ties in question rest mainly upon errors in 



of Cbrist Sax>e ms? [31] 

fact as to the matter of the atonement-dying. 
It is important that this be pointed out. 
Otherwise the grave misconceptions which 
becloud popular belief and teaching on the 
subject will cause many thinking people to 
hold aloof or revolt from real Christianity. 
What is really included in and meant by 
the death of Christ? On what we conceive 
that death to be everything turns. This 
death cannot be defined in a phrase or a 
sentence, because it was a death below death, 
a death with certain implications, such as 
never attached to any other death. It was 
a composite thing. 

ID 

trbe 2)eatb IDoluntars 

AND first, this death was voluntary. 
" Therefore doth the Father love me 
because I lay down my life, that I may take 
it again. No man taketh it away from me, 
but I lay it down myself. I have power (or 



[32] How 2)oe8 tbe 2)eatb 

right) to lay it down, and I have power (or 
right) to take it again. This commandment 
received I from my Father " (John lo : 17, 
18). Such language indicates that there 
was a divine free-will at work, even that of 
God-in-Christ, apart from all the crucifiers 
saw or intended. He indeed submitted him- 
self through his self-emptying to the mal- 
treatment of evil men, even to physical dy- 
ing ; and yet there was a point at which his 
death was independent of their action. 
" With a loud cry," we are told, " he yielded 
up his spirit," as Dr. Robertson Nicoll trans- 
lates, " He sent away his spirit," he dismissed 
it. Yet this death was not suicide. A 
suicide thrusts himself unbidden before the 
time into the presence of Deity. A suicide 
has no right to take or to end his own life ; 
and if he had he has no power to take it 
back again, and in higher relations than be- 
fore. But Jesus declared that he had this 
right. He wrought no injury to others of 
his fellows, and no dishonor to God by so 
laying down his life. This form of dying 



ot Cbrist Save Tflgt [33] 

was as unique in its justification as it was in 
its nature ; for it was Deity itself incarnate, 
moving to its proximate goal in the redemp- 
tive process for mankind ; and so there was 
power to recover the sinful and the lost who 
had merited death, in a profound meaning 
of that term. The atonement-dying then 
was more than a tragedy. It was a death 
which was transacted, or came to its climax, 
behind the crucifixion, though simulta- 
neously with it. It was a dying which none 
of the crucifiers saw, or could see, for it was 
infinitely deeper than their gaze. It could 
be appreciated only in the heavenlies ; even 
the angels cannot sound it. It was an event 
which the contemplation of the redeemed in 
eternity will never exhaust. 

The salvation of man involved the crea- 
tion for him of a new redeemed status in 
the moral universe, what Dr. P. T. Forsyth 
has called ** a judgment by God's grace be- 
come salvation." For the creation of this 
status, a causative power equal to the pro- 
duction of the result was necessary. This 
c 



[34] Mow 5)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

causative power expressed itself in Christ's 
atonement-death. Now we cannot think of 
God as causing the crucifixion of Jesus, with 
all its attendant criminal phenomena, and 
thus releasing man from responsibility for 
it as a crime. This was the work of evil and 
brutal men. 

When Jesus was presented to the cruci- 
fiers he was offered to them as their King; 
and they could have so accepted him if they 
would. But instead they said, " This is the 
heir, come let us kill him and take his in- 
heritance " (Matt. 21 : 38). This was an 
expression of human sin at its worst; and 
for this the crucifiers were responsible. 
They " killed the Prince of Life " (Acts 3 : 
15), and brought upon their nation the di- 
vine judgment. This murder was in no 
sense the divine act. 

The causative power, however, that could 
effect the new moral status for mankind, 
requisite to salvation, must be able to deal 
adequately with all the elements in the situa- 
tion. It must show the exceeding sinfulness 



of Cbrtst Save Xllg? [35] 

of sin; it must have regard to the majesty 
of God's holiness; it must show that he is 
not indifferent to sin — must " show his 
righteousness " ; it must have power over 
the realm of moral evil and its prince; it 
must be able to overcome the evil causation 
between sin and its consequent doom, or 
death; it must be able to place the sinner 
in a recovered and gracious relation to the 
divine clemency; and it must have in it- 
self the energy to bring man into a per- 
sonal ethical relation to God as a renewed 
being. All this divinely atoning work, oc- 
curring behind the scenes of the crucifixion, 
the gracious and holy God only could effect. 
Such a work, moreover, comports with the 
meaning and results of that death of Christ 
which the Scriptures set forth. While the 
crucifixion-terms indeed are used in the 
New Testament in description of this event 
of the atonement, they must have an import 
deeper than appears upon their face. They 
are in part ironical, having a meaning quite 
the opposite of that which lies upon the sur- 



[36] Wow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

face ; as for example, when Paul speaks of 
glorying in the cross of Christ, he glories 
not in the crucifying of his. divine Master, 
but in what the Lord was working out con- 
comitantly with the crucifixion, and despite 
its shame. He was glorying in a divine 
work which turned the tables upon all the 
crucifiers intended. In the ultimate raising 
of the crucified from the dead, Christ 
proved that he had laid down his life in a 
death very different from that which his 
persecutors supposed he had died. 

The cross indeed, as the symbol of shame, 
accentuated the depth of humiliation to 
which the Saviour went for us. Hence the 
profundity and appropriateness of its use as 
a symbol of redemption in the New Testa- 
ment. 

Now God's voluntariness in this atone- 
ment-dying, the moment it is perceived, 
creates a presumption of adaptedness to 
save, because it speaks of divine initiative; 
it asserts the reality and depth of a divine 
love that was timeless, and in spirit was 



ot Cbtiet Save Xllgt [37] 

eternally atoning. He was ever in spirit 
delivering himself into those relations of 
voluntary endurance of that which he fore- 
knew his Son must suffer. The Apostle 
Peter expressed it thus in his sermon on the 
day of Pentecost : " Him being delivered up 
by the determinate counsel and foreknowl- 
edge of God " — that is, delivered up into 
such relations to the sin-problem as he vol- 
untarily assumed — " ye — the crucifiers — ^by 
the hand of lawless men did crucify and 
slay." 

When we see this positive factor at work 
behind the tragedy of the crucifixion, it 
touches our hearts ; and it speaks of hidden 
moral power to reach our case and to ac- 
complish our redemption. There is in all 
this at least a strong presumption of divine 
adaptedness, because of gracious causative 
power within it ; and it awakens our faith in 
its potency. 



[3^] Mow 2)oeg tbe 5)eatb 

m 

XCbe Beatb flilote tban pb^stcal 

THE death of Christ had in it the ele- 
ments of something far deeper than 
physical dying. It of course had in it the 
pain of appreciating how virulent a thing 
sin is. It had in it something which im- 
plies such a sense of moral separateness from 
God, as we may believe characterizes the 
state of lost souls. How this could be, it 
may not be possible for us clearly to see; 
but its fact is surely implied in the Scrip- 
tures. 

In so believing also, we get light on a 
problem which would be far darker if we 
took a shallower view. In some manner, 
in Chrisf s self-limitation, he chose to come 
vicariously into close quarters with the sin- 
problem of mankind. He drank even to its 
dregs, and alone, the wine cup of the divine 
displeasure against sin. 

By this statement we do not mean to im- 



ot Cbrist Sat>e Xllg? [39] 

ply that Christ suffered anything which the 
Father also did not share. We must reject 
the long-prevailing error that God is inca- 
pable of suffering. Considered in the har- 
monious relationships of his attributes, God 
is indeed the infinitely blessed One. But 
this world has been invaded by sin, and 
this has made a difference with God. Sin 
has afflicted God. And in this affliction 
he vicariously suffers for sinful men, rather 
than destroys them. If God can love, or 
if he is holy, he can suffer. Because he 
is infinitely holy and loving, and as such 
is in sensitive relations to his creatures, 
he is the supreme Sufferer in the universe. 
And God can appreciate all the moral equi- 
ties; and in so doing suffers incalculably.^ 
In this matter we do well to bear in mind, 
that when Christ is said to have suffered, 
this is only another way of saying that God- 
in-Christ suffered. When, therefore, we 
hear Jesus on the cross exclaiming, " My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? '' 

* See appendix C. 



[4o] Mow 2)oes tbe 2)eatb 

(Matt. 27 : 46) we are not to think that this 
is the cry of a strictly separate individual 
crying out to another separate individual, 
implying that one is estranged from the 
other, or is enduring an injustice from the 
other. It is not that the Father in stoical 
indifference or cruelty is inflicting a wrong 
upon his innocent Son. The situation is 
rather this : there is being made on the cross 
the expression of incongruities, as between 
Deity in his intrinsic holiness, and Deity 
in vicarious union with the guilty human 
race. The Trinity of the Bible is not di- 
vided against itself. But God in his essen- 
tial holiness, and Deity in man's sinful place, 
suffer the awful sense of moral distance 
from each other. Nothing could be more 
paradoxical. Nothing, but for divine grace, 
could be more incongruous. God-in-Christ 
is undergoing the painful sense of abandon- 
ment to an experience which, but for the 
fact of his standing in the place of the sin- 
ner, would be utterly foreign to Deity. This 
is the one unique, solitary, and astounding 



ot Cbrigt Save Xflg? [41] 

surprise in the whole history of the moral 
universe of Deity standing at the antipodes 
of Deity. This is the infinite divine tragedy.^ 
Hence the exclamation " Why ? " It was 
not that there was doubt as to the pro- 
priety, the wisdom, or moral necessity of 
this separateness ; but the astonishing na- 
ture of it, fitly broke forth in this one 
absolutely unique hour, when the woe of 
God in the human tabernacle was under- 
going its awful passion. That cry of 
Jesus Expressed the sense of Godhood in 
saving union with man, being forsaken of 
Godhood in the essential purity which " can- 
not look upon sin." It expressed the pas- 
sion of the divine heart engaged at such 
measureless cost in saving man. To greater 
depths of condescending love even Deity 
could not go. Yet to go to such a length of 
voluntary humiliation and conscious woe, 
the Scriptures say " became him '' (Heb. 2 : 
10). Nor could he do it without tasting for 

* This was what Dr. P. T. Forsyth calls the ** solemn 
and ordered crisis within God himself.'* — Italics mine. 
Positive Preaching and Modern Mind, p. 300. 



[42] Wow 2)oes tbe Deatb 

the time the bitterness of all that we con- 
ceive as involved in spiritual death. Ac- 
cordingly, we do not hesitate to say, that in 
any proper estimate of what the Bible com- 
mends to us as the divine atonement for sin, 
the tasting of spiritual woe was at the very 
heart of it. There was a curse in it, and 
God-in-Christ in some dreadful way en- 
tered the atmosphere of that curse and died 
of it, as a miner sometimes dies of the choke 
of a death-damp in some deep subterranean 
chamber. Then he emerged the victor over 
sin and Satan. There was of course no sin 
in him to deserve the least he suffered, much 
less the worst. But by the depth of his 
knowledge, the fulness of his sympathy, and 
the largeness of his capacity of self-humilia- 
tion he grasped and endured in kind every- 
thing denoted by death — death of the body, 
death of the soul, and death of the spirit. 
He was in some mysterious but real way 
*' made sin on our behalf '' (2 Cor. 5 : 21). 
He was not only " a sin offering." He was 
that indeed, but more. He became as it 



ot Cbrist Save mg? [43] 

were sin itself, treated himself as if he were 
sin, and in our sin's stead he died. There 
was a penal element in it, though it was 
not penalty in any mechanical, quantitative 
sense, any commercial sense of enduring so 
much pain for so much sin that Christ suf- 
fered,^ The deep mystery of those travail- 
pains has been tenderly and beautifully de- 
scribed by Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall as 
*' the lonely ecstasy of the divine Sufferer, 
whose tremendous love demands pain as the 
only available language through which to 
make its purpose understood." 

A missionary of my acquaintance in the 
far East is living a life of extraordinary 
strenuousness in behalf of the pagan people 
whom he so loves. This strenuousness all 
who know him think excessive. Frequently 
a tender censure is expressed to him by even 
the brethren who love him most. In re- 
sponse to some remonstrances which I my- 
self lately expressed to him, the missionary 
replied, " I really do not feel that I am ac- 

^ Sec appendix D. 



[44] How jPoeg tbe 5)eatb 

complishing anything for these poor people 
for whom I labor, unless I am at positive 
pain in my effort for them ; going away be- 
yond anything which the heathen, the native 
Christians, or my missionary brethren ex- 
pect of me." Some would say there is mor- 
bidness in this. Possibly so; especially in 
the light by which we usually measure our 
ordinary human care for each other. 

The divine-human Christ, however, ex- 
hibited the strenuousness of self-imposed 
pain for man's recovery from sin to the 
highest degree. In this at least there is 
nothing morbid. It was the right of sacri- 
ficial Deity thus to suffer if he would. 
" And apart from (such) shedding of blood, 
there is no remission" (Heb. 9 : 22). Its 
uniqueness is its divineness. While indeed, 
there is no need that the missionary referred 
to should essay to make another atonement 
for sin, God himself having provided " once 
for all " the all-sufficient Lamb for sacrifice, 
yet may not the missionary have attained to 
the position where he is filling up "that 



of Cbrt8t Save ms? [4s] 

which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ " 
(Col. 1 : 24), wherein he is "being conformed 
unto his death?" (Phil. 3 : 10). Such an 
attitude is at least essentially Godlike, and 
puts much of our own so-called Christian liv- 
ing to the blush. The spiritual death which 
we conceive Christ to have undergone was so 
dire a thing, that it resulted, as the evangel- 
ists warrant us in believing, in actual heart 
rupture, on the physical side. And even 
this heart rupture was only a faint symbol 
of the deeper and invisible heartbreak of 
the Infinite. In all this, spiritual and moral 
power was gathering — storing itself for dy- 
namic, transforming effect upon men — as 
through the centuries they should gradually 
apprehend the depth of meaning in such a 
death. In suffering thus Christ made ac- 
knowledgment in his normal conscience — the 
only normal conscience the world has ever 
known — of what sin deserved ; and in kind 
he tasted the penalty he acknowledged. He 
only knew what sin deserved, and in the 
practical acknowledgment of that desert he 



[46] How 5)oes tbe 2)eatb 

became as Doctor Forsyth says, *' the con- 
science of the conscience.'' That helps our 
conscience. We here have a conscience ade- 
quate to measure the whole situation, one we 
can trust, a conscience which is the deepest 
reality in the moral universe. The assur- 
ance born in our souls by the divine Spirit, 
consonant with the divine word, that Qirist 
in his atoning work is thus " the conscience 
of the conscience,'' saves us from the most 
painful thing in human experience, the 
sense of guilt. If God-in-Christ self-moved, 
is thus minded to undertake to taste vica- 
riously for me the elements of my doom, and 
from the foundation of things, has been so 
minded, why should I find fault with its 
ethics ? At all events, it wondrously moves 
me to hate my sin and to sympathize with 
my God. So at this point also I know how, 
to a degree at least, the death of Christ 
saves me. 



of Cbrist Save xas? [47] 



XTbe 2)eatb Involved tbc 
IResttrrection 

THE death of Christ was also such a 
form of dying as logically and neces- 
sarily involved his living again on a higher 
plane, with enlarged and higher powers. 
These acquired powers were such as on any 
lower plane, even Christ himself, morally 
speaking, could not have exercised. 

We have previously assumed that Christ's 
death implied his resurrection also. But the 
matter is so important, so essential to the 
particular difficulty we have set out to meet, 
that it requires special explication. 

To think of the death of Christ as mere 
mortal dying is a sad narrowing, and so a 
real falsification of that death as the Scrip- 
tures view it. Christ's death is a death plus 
— plus all that is implied in the resurrection. 
In the fine discussion of the resurrection by 
Dr. A. P. Peabody, in his book, " Chris- 



[48] Mow 5)oe8 tbe 5)eatb 

tianity and Science," he likens the super- 
session of the resurrection upon the death 
of Christ to the manner in which the phe- 
nomenon of the sun's rising on the verge of 
the Arctic Circle follows almost simulta- 
neously its setting. He says, '* Jesus (like 
the sun) just dips beneath the horizon, and 
lo! from the very twilight of his setting 
bursts the glorious dawn of the resurrec- 
tion day/' The resurrection was logically 
evolved from the very movement earthward 
and manward of the Sun of Righteousness. 
The analogy pressed a little further would 
suggest that the dawn is due to the energy 
of the spheres, whose course is from of old, 
rejoicing " as a strong man to run a race." 
The voluntariness, the persistency, and 
energy of this death-resurrection movement, 
may be compared to the force of gravity, 
which moves sun, earth, and stars in their 
courses; whereas the criminal violence 
shown in the crucifixion may be likened to 
the puny attempt of some demented spirit 
to explode the sun by hurling dynamite at it. 



of Cbrtst Saye xgg ? [49] 

The resurrection was the proximate goal 
of the cross, predetermined in the heavens, 
albeit the crucifiers knew not nor cared for 
any such thing. 

Three times in the earthly life of Jesus 
his gospel was authenticated by the Father's 
voice right out of the blue, as once before 
the law of Sinai was authenticated. These 
three occasions were at the Jordan bap- 
tism, on the transfiguration mount, and at 
the time of the visit of the Greeks, near the 
end of his earthly course. Now it is of vast 
significance that on each of these occasions 
he was in some form accentuating his own 
death, but in such a form as involved his 
living again on a higher plane. 

At the Jordan Jesus was enacting the 
sign in symbolic death and resurrection of 
what he actually was in his own person, the 
approved Son of man, the " second Adam,*' 
immortal in his victory over sin and death. 
Hence the voice of the Father, ** Thou art 
my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased " 
(Mark i : ii). 

D 



[so] trtow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

On the mount of Transfiguration the 
Father was signaHzing the message the 
apostles were to use for morally transfigur- 
ing the world. Hence the injunction, 
" Hear ye him/' was added to the prior ut- 
terance, '' This is my Son, my chosen " 
(Luke 9 : 35). That is, hear him on the 
theme of his converse with Moses and Elias 
— the theme of his death (literally, his 
*' exodus"), his passing through the Red 
Sea of his voluntary dying to emerge in 
resurrection on the Canaan side of the flood. 
So hear ye him, respecting the import of 
this death-resurrection, that ye will gather 
from it power for your task of morally 
transfiguring mankind, as you go on to 
build on my foundations — the foundations 
laid in my " exodus,'' the passing of my 
Red Sea. 

On the occasion of the visit of the Greeks, 
Jesus was impressing his disciples that, if as 
his successors they would effectively evan- 
gelize the Gentile world of which these visit- 
ing Greeks were the precursors, they must 



of Cbrtgt Save Tag? [si] 

live out their lives on the same principles on 
which he lived his ; that is, by a species of 
dying and living again. Hence the empha- 
sis throughout this extended homily on the 
death and resurrection principle in vari- 
ous forms (John 12 : 24-36). 

In the thought of the New Testament, 
the death of Christ and the resurrection of 
Christ always mutually imply each other. 
The atonement is causative of the resurrec- 
tion; and the resurrection presupposes the 
atonement. These two stand or fall to- 
gether. But the moment this is seen, the 
uniqueness of the death of Christ flashes 
upon us, and is ever after to us a different 
thing. 

On the occasion just referred to, when the 
Greeks came to Jesus desiring to see him — 
to divine his secret — he answered, " Ex- 
cept a corn of wheat fall into the earth and 
die, it abideth by itself alone : but if it die, 
it beareth much fruit'' (John 12 : 24). 
In the use of this figure, Jesus represented 
that the key to all that he was, and all he 



[52] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

would work, was expressed in the principle 
of his death considered as a planting, rather 
than as a mere burial. Burial implies cor- 
ruption. Planting looks forward to harvest. 
The living again in the form which attends 
the sowing of seed-corn was the underlying 
concept. 

A little later, in harmony with the same 
idea and in full view of his cross, Jesus 
said, " Now is the judgment of this world 
— the crisis of all crises — now shall the 
prince of this world be cast out '' (John 
12 : 31). He thus spoke of such a turn- 
ing of the tables on his arch enemy, who up 
to the time of his crucifixion supposed he 
was casting out the Lord Christ, because 
beyond his death, and conditioned by his 
death, Christ saw his own triumphant ris- 
ing again. It was in such a power that he 
expected to overcome all his apparent de- 
feats. On the same occasion the Saviour 
said, "And if I be lifted up from the 
earth " — by this expression meaning, " lift- 
ed up out of the earth on to resurrection 



of Cbrist Save Tflg? [53] 

ground " — " will draw all unto myself " 
(John 12 : 32). The next expression jus- 
tifies the conception we are expounding: 
" But this he said, signifying by what man- 
ner of death he should die" (ver. 33). A 
death issuing in resurrection is plainly im- 
plied. The " manner of death " of which 
Christ spoke was a death destined to shoot 
forth into higher, diviner life according to 
the design of the planter. In this respect, 
it was an entirely unique kind of death. 
That this utterance had conveyed some 
such impresion even to the multitude that 
stood about, is evident from the query which 
they threw out, '' We have heard out of the 
law, that the Christ abideth forever, and 
how sayest thou, that the Son of man must 
be lifted up ? Who is this Son of man ? " 
(Ver. 34.) The answer of course is, that 
the death of the Son of man — the second 
Adam-r-was more than the lifting up on a 
tree, more than a crucifixion. It was a con- 
summation resulting in a glorified life. The 
lifting up was not finality, but only a half- 



[54] Mow 2)oe8 tbe 2)eatb 

way house to the divinest of all ultimates. 
It was the perception of that ultimate that 
broke into the words of the dying penitent 
malefactor — the one faith-filled expression 
of all the utterances at the cross. This man 
did not say to Jesus " Save thyself." He 
did say, virtually, *^ Save me ! " He used in 
faith the saving name. And he said, " Jesus, 
remember me when thou comest in thy king- 
dom '' (Luke 23 : 42). This was the king- 
dom which he saw was awaiting the rising 
Lord beyond his cross. This penitent, and 
he alone, saw the atoning death as deeper 
than the tragedy. No wonder Jesus re- 
joicingly replied, " Verily I say unto thee, 
to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise " 
(Luke 23 : 43). In perfect keeping with 
this perception of the real nature of the 
Lord's death, was Peter's declaration in 
his sermon at Pentecost, when with pro- 
found spiritual insight he perceived, and 
then exclaimed, " For it was not possible 
that he should be holden of death " (Acts 
2 : 24). The apostle clearly saw that such 



of Cbrist Save ms2 [55] 

a person as the sinless divine-human Christ, 
the Messiah of prophecy — that prophecy 
which foreannounced the resurrection glory 
of Christ as plainly as it did his sacrificial 
dying — that he who by his death had mas- 
tered death, could not be a victim of death 
as mere sinful mortals are. 

It was in order to awaken a similar ap- 
preciation in those who walked with Jesus 
on the way to Emmaus, that in a burst 
of warranted surprise and reproof, Je- 
sus exclaimed, " O foolish men — men des- 
titute of that higher reason, consonant with 
true biblical insight — and slow of heart to 
believe in all the prophets have spoken, be- 
hooved it not the Christ to suffer these 
things, and to enter into his glory ? and be- 
ginning from Moses and from all the 
prophets, he interpreted to them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning himself " 
(Luke 24 : 25, 27) ; that is, the things con- 
cerning himself on that subject: "the suf- 
ferings of Christ and the glories that should 
follow them" (i Peter i : 11). It was 



[s6] IHow 2)oeg tbe a)eatb 

morally impossible for Christ " to enter into 
his glory " except through dying, except 
through his peculiar kind of dying, one in- 
volving resurrection as a peculiar attesta- 
tion of the real atonement-death. 

In Paul's account of the institution of 
the Lord's Supper, he represents the Sa- 
viour as saying to his disciples, " For as 
often as ye eat this bread and drink the 
cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he 
come" (i Cor. ii : 26). But it is not a 
mere death that is proclaimed, or that is 
contemplated. It is a misfortune that many 
persons in the life-habit of their minds at 
the Lord's table, think of this table as 
funereal, mainly occupied with death and 
mortality. By such persons the table is mor- 
bidly viewed, and some absent themselves 
from it on that account. Most properly there 
is an element of deep solemnity in that ordi- 
nance. On another side of it, however, 
the commemoration is to be viewed as any- 
thing but funereal. It is a festival. It was 
instituted in lieu of the feast of Passover. 



of Cbrtgt Save xag? [57] 

At this new festival our Lord twice " gave 
thanks " ; and we eat the bread and drink 
the wine symbolic of refreshment and ex- 
hilaration. This feast concluded with a 
hallel, or hymn of praise, in the spirit of 
which "they went out," to service and to 
conquest. It is ever the trysting-place of 
the believer with his divine Lover, the ban- 
queting-room where the disciple feasts with 
his Lord, with whom as such he has great 
delight, while he is also sobered by the re- 
flection on the vast cost at which this fel- 
lowship was purchased. It is precisely at 
this point that the atonement-death as often 
as it is properly contemplated, becomes 
searchingly ethical. Failing of this, the 
observance becomes a sacrilege, and the par- 
ticipant ** eateth and drinketh condemna- 
tion to himself, not discerning the body " — 
the body incarnate, the body atoning, the 
body mystical, and the risen body of be- 
lievers with whom the communicant is cor- 
porately united. 

Moreover, this memorial proclaims that 



[5^] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

Christ who is remembered as once dead, is 
now ahve, and in the logical order, about to 
come again, " apart from sin unto salva- 
tion " (Heb. 9 : 28). Now the moment we 
see the death of Christ pass into this unique 
glory, we take new heart. There is for us 
a power of God unto salvation, working 
mightily for us in the moral universe, as 
well as working mightily within us, ** both 
to will and work for his good pleasure '' 
(Phil. 2 : 13). The death thus passed into 
life (because by the Spirit of God a new 
quickening energy has entered us) is seen 
to raise us from death in trespasses and sins. 
Jesus in the visions of John in the Reve- 
lation is represented as saying, while he laid 
his right hand upon the seer, " Fear not, I 
am the first and the last, and the living One ; 
and I was dead, and behold ! I am alive for- 
evermore, and I have the keys of death and 
of hades " (Rev. i : 18). So with a proper 
view of the relation of Christ's death to its 
sequel, his resurrection, and of both to our- 
selves, we in our turn may feel the power 



of Cbrtst Save mg? [59] 

of the Saviour's hand upon us ; and we may 
hear him say unto us " Fear not " ; and we 
may become certain that the keys of his au- 
thority are prevaiHng to open up to us all 
privilege, power, and blessing. 

The resurrection implies something far 
deeper than triumph over physical death. 
It was fundamentally a moral victory. 
This matter of the resurrection has often 
been too narrowly viewed, with undue em- 
phasis on the physical or material side. 
Christ himself, as well as his apostles, re- 
garded his resurrection as primarily a moral 
achievement, while it embraced the physical 
change also. Christ's resurrection is a most 
unique and unparalleled event in this re- 
spect. His own character and the mastery 
also of the sin problem were the guarantee 
of this sort of spiritual triumph over death ; 
and these two facts — his character and his 
rising again — afford grounds for the credi- 
bility and trustworthiness of the New Testa- 
ment acounts of the supernaturalism in the 
life of Jesus in all its forms. Says one, '' No 



[6o] Mow 2)oes tbe 2)eatb 

denial of the possibility of miracle, however 
dogmatic, even though it bore the imprima- 
tur of the most renowned scientists of the 
world, can explain away this sentence of 
Christ, *' Lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world '' (Matt. 28 : 20). 
This promise was spoken by the risen Lord 
to enforce the execution of the resurrec- 
tion errand committed to the church; 
namely, the errand of evangelizing the whole 
world. The basis of Christ's confidence that 
this stupendous task was practicable, was 
his confidence in the fact of the resurrec- 
tion in its totality, when once it should be 
understood, as primarily a moral achieve- 
ment — an achievement which dealt with the 
whole sin-situation of the world. This was 
a matter vastly deeper than the quickening 
of Christ's flesh. Accordingly, the appear- 
ances of Christ in the ten epiphanies follow- 
ing upon the resurrection, were indeed so 
materialized in form, " so objective as to be 
apprehensible to the senses," yet withal so 
ethereal at their base as to give the "domi- 



of Cbrtgt Save Tllg? [6i] 

nant impression that he was and is forever- 
more an all-conquering spirit." In his res- 
urrection spiritual and material death was 
potentially overcome, mortality was swal- 
lowed up. His rising was not, as Dr. O. O. 
Fletcher, from whom we have just quoted, 
has further well said, " A temporal reversal 
of the laws of death, but a permanent super- 
session of them.'* 

" It is common," argues Doctor Fletcher,^ 
substantially, " in these days, for disciples 
of the Neo-Hegelian philosophy to deny 
that a universal and eternal religion can be 
linked to a historical event in time. We 
might concede this if such a representation 
covered the whole case ; but the situation is 
far otherwise. Back of Christ's rising from 
the dead, and perfectly congruous with it, 
is the reality of his sinless self-conscious- 
ness. And this reality puts him far above 
the rank of a mere ' historical personage. ' " 

Through the moral achievement of the 

* In a remarkable essay entitled ** The Resurrection 
in the Light of Modern Science," published at Chicopee, 
Mass. 



[62] Mow H)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

resurrection, especially, Christ reaches an 
unequaled height. He thereby becomes a 
super-historical personage; and as such he 
is " eternal in life and universal in power." 
He is " the same yesterday and to-day, yea 
and forever" (Heb. 13 : 8). In such a 
light we better see how the whole work of 
Christ in death and life works to save us.^ 

^ Elsewhere, in my book entitled ** The Meaning and 
Message of the Cross,** I have explicitly shown how the 
cross with its implied resurrection, works in the spiritual 
universe as a moral achievement; and I need not here 
repeat the details of that argument. I may, however, be 
permitted to enumerate the four respects at least in which 
I conceive Christ's atonement objectively achieved some- 
thing profoundly potential in the moral world, which 
makes for man's recovery from sin. The death of 
Christ as I view it, (i) acknowledged the fact that the 
sin-principle, or the collective evil of mankind, had mer- 
ited death; that that evil must eventuate in death in the 
direst sense, and then in principle Christ tasted that 
death judicially for us. (2) That Christ's death by the 
very attitude in which he bore himself to the cross, 
despite all the temptations to the contrary, " non-suited " 
in the court, so to speak, of the moral universe, the 
devil, his adversary and ours. Christ, therefore, instead 
of being himself cast out, cast him and his false phi- 
losophy as a fatal power out of the moral world. Christ 
thus potentially destroyed Satan, gave hira his death- 
blow. (3) Still further, Christ by his voluntary devote- 
ment of himself for our sins, potentially overcame the 
fatal causation between our sin and our death, or 
spiritual doom. Thus he introduced a new causation of 
supernatural grace. And yet more, (4) Through this 
gracious redeeming transaction, of himself in Christ, 



ot Cbriat Save TOs? [63] 



mn 

Ube H>catb UnvolveD tbe ascension 

anJ) Mvinc Bn&ttement 

of power 

So long as the death of Christ is con- 
ceived as a mere episode in the Hf e- 
course of Jesus, standing apart from his 
whole presence and career, it is of course 
difficult to perceive the connection between 
such a death and the salvation contemplated. 

God adjudged all mankind to be Christ's own beloved and 
ransomed possession; and thus heaven itself has more 
interest in our salvation than we ourselves have. I 
maintain in short that in the thought of Scripture, and 
by the very moral necessities of the case in an achieve- 
ment of this kind, wrought in the universe, this death of 
Christ, viewed as a whole, was what Dr. P. T. Forsyth 
has fitly termed it, a *' judgment-death "; that is, the 
accomplishment of Christ on his cross so went to the 
ultimate realities in the moral universe of all that sin 
had brought into it, that this redemption through the 
cross, was a microcosm or anticipation of the final judg- 
ment, and all its mighty issues. Every charge that can 
ever rise against us was at the cross met and answered. 
We can therefore look forward to that day with boldness 
and not with fear. Through these ways, the grounds on 
which and the processes by which the death of Christ 
saves us, are disclosed, and they are seen to belong to 
the very nature of things in a universe which is poten- 
tially redeemed. 



[64] Mow S)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

As we have previoUwSly stated, the death 
of Christ was a death with implications. 
Several of these we have named. We now 
come to another, organically connected with 
the voluntary laying down of the Saviour's 
life. This Christ who died not only rose 
from the dead, but after a period of forty 
days, also ascended, " far above all rule, 
and authority, and power, and dominion, and 
every name that is named, not only in this 
world but in that which is to come '' (Eph. 
I : 2i). As there seated, Christ has be- 
come the divine-human intercessor in our 
behalf. But Christ is not an intercessor in 
any such sense as implies that he is a sepa- 
rate third party, brought in from without, 
to stand between an irritated Deity and the 
victims of his wrath. Christ's intercession 
is rather the extension of the efficacy of the 
atoning-death. In this work he is in entire 
accord with the Father, dealing with the 
high moral relations as between Deity and 
humanity, at the point where sin had threat- 
ened all. 



ot Cbrist Save Xllg? [65] 

The intercession represents the principle 
of mediation, as between, not different per- 
sons, but different moral forces in the 
universe which were at variance. This in- 
tercession had to do, not with the disposi- 
tion of God, but rather with the harmonious 
and self-consistent action of God in the 
work of saving from the multiplied poten- 
cies of sin. It had respect to ultimate har- 
monies and relations in the entire spiritual 
realm. It implied that so long as the as- 
cended Christ, in the entirety of the act of 
his sacrificial work, is at the right hand of 
the Father — ^the place of privilege and 
power — nothing can ever go back of or dis- 
turb the moral equities there represented 
for repentant souls. This work evermore 
avails for us. If the intercessory prayer of 
our Lord in the seventeenth chapter of John 
be carefully studied it will be seen how com- 
pletely Jesus identifies all he contemplated, 
with the Father's original will. "They 
know that all things whatsoever thou hast 
given me are from thee" (ver. 7). 

E 



[66] Kow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

" That they may be one, even as we are '' 
(ver. 22). Apart from the Father, Jesus 
never did one original thing, " The Son can 
do nothing of himself, but what he seeth 
the Father doing'' (John 5 : 19). 

How certain then it is that in the media- 
tion of Christ, he deals with moral relations 
— relations which concern moral equities 
as between God and man — rather than with 
mere dispositions; with moral consistencies 
and not with tempers. 

But more than this. Christ as ascended 
has " received gifts '' of the divine Spirit 
for us, the purchase of his redemption. 
" When he ascended on high, he led cap- 
tivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. . . 
And he gave some to be apostles ; and some 
prophets, and some evangelists; and some 
pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of 
the saints unto the work of ministering 
unto the building up of the body of Christ " 
(Eph. 4 : 8-12). From this point of view 
the efficacy of the death of Christ shows it- 
self in communications of power and grace. 



ot CbviBt Save Tag? [67] 

through the Holy Spirit, in a thousand 
forms in the working energies of the church. 

Looked at in another aspect this work of 
Christ as ascended, expresses itself in crea- 
ting here on earth through the Holy Spirit 
a new atmosphere, or element, spiritually 
magnetic with his own risen power. 

Marconi and his collaborators have de- 
monstrated that the atmosphere which en- 
velopes our earth is charged with an electric 
fluid through which a machine may transmit 
a current to another instrument attuned to 
receive it on the opposite side of the ocean. 
Newfoundland to-day is sending business 
messages to Ireland as freely as Boston 
sends them to New York. These wondrous 
things are possible because of the existence 
in some mysterious way of this vast cir- 
cumambient ether or field of magnetic force, 
so susceptible to the passing of a current of 
thought from one point to another even 
through the air. It is expected that shortly 
some form of power will also be transmis- 
sible through the ether. 



[68] Mow Does tbe 5)eatb 

In some such way, through the endue- 
ment which came at Pentecost, the whole at- 
mosphere in which we dwell spiritually, has 
been charged with a peculiar energy ; it has 
been endued with a new susceptibility. 
Since then, so long as we are attuned to the 
spirit of the risen, living Christ who is at 
the right hand of the Father, and who 
through his own divine work has become so 
attuned to us, we may live in the most inti- 
mate relation to his grace and power. We 
can in every activity of life do and achieve 
what otherwise would have been impossible 
to us. 

An illustration such as this may help us to 
understand the marvelous significance of 
Pentecost. Pentecost accentuated the fact 
that since Christ's atoning death was ac- 
cepted in heaven, Christ's promise of the 
Holy Spirit to the disciples : " Behold, I send 
forth the promise of the Father upon you ! " 
(Luke 24 : 49) was being fulfilled. The 
gift of the Spirit is not to be adequately 
thought of as something bestowed in an 



ot Cbrist Save TUB? [69] 

episodal, sporadic way. Previously to Pen- 
tecost, the Spirit indeed came upon in- 
dividuals and even companies of men for 
particular purposes in the way of an affu- 
sion or in the communication of a particu- 
lar gift or grace. But the condition and 
manner of this power are more clearly dis- 
closed in the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. 
The coming of the Spirit on that day sig- 
nified that the atoning, risen, interceding 
Christ was now become dynamic — logically 
so — for the church in a new way; namely, 
in the creation for the church of an all- 
enswathing element in which it could ex- 
ercise its life — an element as necessary to 
the soul as atmosphere is to the lungs, or 
water to the fish. While the Holy Spirit is 
ever a person, he also has a mode of his 
being as an element, or divine ether, of 
which we may properly speak, as "it" as 
well as '' he." In the Acts the Holy Spirit 
is referred to in both ways, according as the 
Greek article is used or not. In the element 
of this invisible but real divine ether, since 



[70] Mow 5)oe6 tbe 5)eatb 

Pentecost, the church was expected hence- 
forth to live its life and perform its func- 
tions. Moreover, according as the church 
does reckon on this power in the habit of its 
new life, will it realize the divine enduement 
of power, intended for the effective service 
of Christ, in each generation, until he comes 
again. In this " field of force," the believer 
becomes conscious not of the Spirit (who is 
pleased to conceal himself), but of Christ 
(whom it delights the Spirit to reveal), and 
of his own union with him. This union is 
organic, vital, reconstructive. It is a mys- 
tical union. But it is none the less real on 
that account. It is the marriage of the bride 
to the bridegroom; the union of the mem- 
ber with the Head, in the new Adamic rela- 
tion. And the potency of all this is in the 
death of Christ properly understood. 

Since the Christ who died is alive again 
and is now exalted on the intercessory 
throne, he has become the new polarizing 
energy of mankind. He is the personalized 
dynamo in the moral universe, working 



of Cbrigt Saye ma? [71] 

through a " field of force " which he him- 
self has created. The situation thus con- 
stituted, in which mankind may live, move, 
and have its being, is as permanently 
charged with his potential and saving 
energy, as our physical universe is alive 
with electrical power, even though that 
strange fluid is wholly invisible to the eye. 
This moral and vital energy of the Christ 
is as available for us as the magnetic energy 
in the charged overhead wire is usable for 
the trolley car; all that is necessary is to 
keep the trolley in contact with the wire, 
and new divine movement is possible in 
our life. 

Of course in principle and potency, this 
power was ever incipient for the race in 
God. It was constitutionally so. He was 
that kind of a God — an atoning, mediating, 
interceding, and indwelling God. The his- 
torical enactment of all this, however, was 
necessary, to render it concrete, pictorial, 
and apprehensible by us. Mankind is thus 
enabled the better to get hold of it. 



[72] Mow 2)oe8 tbe g)eatb 

When, therefore, the death of Christ ex- 
tended and applied through this gift of 
Pentecost does lay hold on us, it works the 
profoundest changes. That power changed 
Peter and his companions into different 
men, and so saved them in a larger sense 
than that in which they were saved before. 

In the same way, the continued power im- 
plied as constant in the church since Pente- 
cost passes into and empowers us ; and thus 
also it saves us in a larger sense than we 
were saved before. It saves us out of weak- 
ness and ineffectiveness into Spirit-filled 
might, if we will but have it so. 

n 

Zhc 2)eatb llmpUe& a iQew IDttal 
Tttnion TKttitb Cbrist 

FROM the beginning, the provision of 
salvation through the death of Christ 
was upon the presupposition that every be- 
liever in that death would become vitally and 
personally united with Christ. Salvation 



ot Cbrigt Saye Tag? [73] 

through the death of Christ was thus never 
conceived in the divine thought as a mere 
artifice or trick of legaHsm. In so far as 
it has been made to appear such, in some 
narrow constructions of language in the 
New Testament, we may depend a deeper 
insight into that language with its impli- 
cations, would dispel the illusion. The so- 
called *' temporary thought-vehicles " of 
forensic representation, stand for some ul- 
timate moral realities, in the nature of God, 
and in the nature of the moral universe. 
The principle of the mediation then in- 
volves something organic to Christ's per- 
son, to all the previous steps embraced 
in his dying and living again in glory; 
and organic also to all the members of 
his mystical body. It contemplates bring- 
ing them all subjectively into real unison. 

It was but half the truth that men saw 
when they perceived the substitutionary 
bearing of the death of Christ on their sal- 
vation. Stopping there, the view of salva- 
tion was inadequate and mechanical; and 



[74] Mow 2)oeg tbe Beatb 

it was certain to fall into positive error, as 
partial inferences were drawn from so nar- 
row a premise. The mechanically substitu- 
tionary idea failed to comprehend that the 
death of Christ was vicarious in such a 
sense as committed the believer to holiness 
of living, rather than sanctioned a release 
from beholdenness to moral law. It does 
release us from the bondage of guilt and 
condemnation. This death, however, was 
such a death that when in its whole fact and 
energy it comes to exercise itself, it provides 
the dynamic needed to enter into the be- 
liever, and empowers him to live the new 
life to which the death of Christ has com- 
mitted him. 

In the great utterances of the Apostle 
Paul, in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth 
chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, this 
is set forth with the greatest clearness and 
force. The apostle shows how the energy 
of the Christ who was crucified, is risen, and 
now reigns above, through the might of 
*' the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 



ot Cbrigt Save ms? [75] 

Jesus" (Rom. 8:2), becomes inwardly a 
power for righteousness in the believer. 
Says Doctor DuBose, '' All the reality in the 
universe can be no gospel to us as long as it 
remains objective, or until it enters into liv- 
ing relations to ourselves." To the in- 
validity of this objectiveness we agree if by 
objective is meant exclusively objective. 

There is undoubtedly a subjective side in 
the saving work for men; but it is often 
overlooked that in order to the awakening 
of the right subjective attitude in the soul, 
the outer objective facts of Christ's atoning 
work need to be definitely seen and felt. If 
it is true that even the Holiest cannot for- 
give by a mere act of the will, without mak- 
ing cost to himself, it is also true that one 
cannot receive forgiveness without an ante- 
cedent preparation of mind, and even a 
unique movement of the forgiver upon one's 
heart. There are difficulties to be overcome 
in the subjective soul in order to effect a real 
forgiveness and conversion. If one is to 
be truly and wisely forgiven, it must be 



[76] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

under such conditions as make it difficult to 
repeat the sin. Nay, more; a forgiveness 
that has value presupposes that an actual 
moral revolt from the sin forgiven has oc- 
curred. One who is the subject of a real 
evangelical repentance discovers, to his 
horror, that he has brought the judgment 
due to his sin upon another — that the logical 
and actual outcome of his sin in its ultimate 
crisis really crucified the Lord of Glory. To 
repent truly, which is not an easy matter, is 
to discern this, that there is a divine care, 
even to the endurance of sin's judgment, 
which still follows after the soul (even 
though it has killed the Prince of Life), 
with desire to recover and pardon it; that 
this forgiveness is offered even at the ex- 
pense of the divine heart-break. The mo- 
ment this is seen there results a change of 
care respecting continuance in sin. The 
bearing of one^s sin upon God is seen and a 
profound revolt against it is awakened. 
Thus true repentance is grounded in the 
objective power of Christ's death. 



ot Cbrist Save Xtlg? [77] 

In order to realize the divine love also, 
which is most fundamental in the soul's re- 
newal, and which is to prove the staying 
power in all subsequent life of the Christian, 
the profound objective in Christ's sacrificial 
work needs to be seen. Now the divine love 
is not mere clemency in God, not mere 
amiability. God's love in order to secure 
our trust must be a holy love. Christ's 
Father was a " holy Father." The divine 
love must deal with sin and guilt; in order 
to do this, either to divine or human satis- 
faction, this love must include in its own 
internal necessity a fit judgment on sin as 
an accomplished moral fact in the divine 
government. This love is revealed on the 
background of a proper judgment executed 
against the whole sin-principle ; a love which 
did not go to the depths like this would be 
superficial and even immoral. 

Still further, the perception of the objec- 
tive sacrificial work of Christ as the ac- 
cepted provision on the part of God himself 
of a dire judgment upon the sin-principle 



[7^3 Wow 2)oeg tbe Deatb 

must ever be the basis of a restful faith. 
The sinner, naturally both timid and suspi- 
cious respecting God, is helped by knowing 
that God-in-Christ has met and answered 
his full guilt. There is then no danger 
that some unexplored remainder of his 
guilt may some day return in judgment 
upon him. Christ and he alone was able to 
measure to the full the due judgment which 
belonged to our sin. Since he with infinite 
knowledge and sympathy has measured and 
satisfied it, we are enabled to trust and rest. 
Thus the objective and subjective aspects of 
salvation are really correlative ; each stands 
or falls with the other. Thus again it is 
better seen how the death of Christ savingly 
aflfects us. 

The real Bible conception of the atone- 
ment-death of Christ was never narrowly or 
solely substitutionary and objective and, as 
such, built on any " forensic fiction " : it was 
a death archetypal also to our own death to 
sin and resurrection to newness of life. 
The Bible view throughout has ever been 



of Cbrigt Save Xflg? [79] 

vicario-vital. Leave out the vital element — 
the very point at which the substitutionary 
work passes into subjective power — and you 
have emasculated the Bible view of the 
atonement. You have emptied the death 
of Christ of its intrinsic and distinctive 
quality and meaning, as well as of its pre- 
destined power to reconstitute the soul in 
righteousness and true holiness. On such 
perverted data, of course, no one can show 
how the death of Christ saves any one. 

Let the death of Christ, however, be con- 
ceived as vicario-vital in its bearings and 
implications, and all is changed. The ra- 
tionale of its power over men is then quite 
another matter. 

This vicario-vital characteristic of the 
atonement may be illustrated by the working 
of the principle in the relationship of 
motherhood to offspring. In human mother- 
hood, the mother prior to the birth of her 
infant vicariously bears its life in a way of 
which the child is long unconscious, and for 
which it is irresponsible. The infant as yet 



[3o] Mow 5)oeg tbe 5)eatb 

has no independent life. That life, in the 
exercise of the vital functions of the mother, 
is lived vicariously, although the germ of an 
independent life is there. After the birth 
of the child into the world, the mother for a 
long period still vicariously bears her child's 
limitations, weaknesses, and sicknesses, the 
incipient individual life meanwhile gaining 
in vigor. 

By and by the child attains to its majority, 
and its personal life becomes mature, so ma- 
ture that it almost forgets it was ever de- 
pendent on a life and care and suffering 
anterior to its own. The vicarious element 
now recedes into the background while the 
personal vital element comes more promi- 
nently to the front. None, however, knows 
so well as the mother how dependent 
throughout this life had been on her own 
vicarious, substitutionary love. The child 
may forget, but the mother never. 

Even so it is in the working of the substi- 
tutionary death of Christ. At the beginning 
everything starts in the vicarious realm of 



of Cbrigt Save Xftgl [30 

God's parental and redemptive love. Later, 
the personal, subjective life awakes to its 
own self-consciousness. Later still, the 
separate life of the believer becomes more 
and more conscious of its independent self- 
hood. But even then the love and grace 
which are constitutionally in the vicarious 
divine principle, by a subtle alchemy, keep 
passing into the new vitalized personality 
of the child. One may indeed reach a place 
where he imagines the vicarious initiative 
was never a reality in his personal history; 
and he even may disown it outright. A gen- 
eration of persons, careless of Christian 
truth, has been known to live on the moral 
momentum derived from its evangelical fore- 
bears. In such case denials of worthy ances- 
tral life are as pitiable as they are super- 
ficial. A reverent conception of the vicario- 
vital nature of the Saviour's death, as the 
Scriptures present it, would save from me- 
chanical narrowness, on the one hand, and 
from supercilious and arrogant latitudina- 
rianism on the other. 
p 



[82] How Docs tbc Deatb 



XTbe Deatb Implteb tbc iRenewal of 
tbc Cosmos 

THE death or dying of Christ involved 
also the renewal of the cosmos ; and 
that vitally concerns us. Our salvation will 
not be complete until the redemption of the 
body, as well as the soul, is accomplished. 
And this can never be until creation as a 
whole has its second birth. 

" But now we see, not yet, all things sub- 
jected to him." " But we do behold Jesus 
because of the suffering of death crowned 
with glory and honor'' (Heb. 2 : 8, 9). 
This is the pledge that when this process is 
complete, all things will be put under him. 
That victory carries ours with it. In the 
eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, 
the apostle says : *' For I reckon that the suf- 
ferings of this present time are not worthy 
to be compared with the glory which shall 
be revealed to us-ward. For the creation 



ot Cbttgt Save mat gs] 

was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, 
but by reason of him who subjected it, in 
hope that the creation itself also shall be de- 
livered from the bondage of corruption into 
the liberty of the glory of the children of 
God. For we know that the whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together 
until now/' And not only so, but ^' our- 
selves also, who have the first fruits of the 
Spirit, even we ourselves, groan within our- 
selves waiting for our adoption, to wit, the 
redemption of our body " (Rom. 8 : 20, 23) . 
Then this redemption of the body will not 
be accomplished by itself alone. Neither 
will the cosmical universe be delivered out 
of its travail pains alone. There is a cor- 
porate unity between us and the created uni- 
verse; even between the mortal body of 
every one of us and the cosmos. In the his- 
toric fall of Eden the whole cosmos shared. 
As a unity it went down together. In a 
unity, also, it will at length be brought to its 
new birth. There will yet be " a new heaven 
and a new earth." The Captain or arche- 



[34] How 2)oe8 tbe 2)eatb 

type of our salvation has been perfected, or 
consummated, through sufferings; and in 
this we have the pledge or earnest that in 
due course we also shall be consummated 
with him. " That in the ages to come, he 
might show the exceeding riches , of his 
grace in kindness toward us in Christ Je- 
sus ^' (Eph. 2:7). 

Jesus as glorified is the corporate new 
Head, not only of all believers, but of the 
whole cosmos also. And we are to be " like 
him" (i John 3:2). He declared that if 
he were to be uplifted out of the earth 
through his atoning death on to resurrection 
ground, he would " draw all " — ^that is, all 
things — unto himself. He would become 
the new personal center, or nucleus, to 
whom the now groaning universe will rad- 
ically relate itself for transfiguration, or 
deeper reprobation. In the Revelation 
Jesus is represented as saying : *' Behold, 
I make all things new'' (Rev. 21 : 5). 
The full salvation of men then involves be- 
ing delivered into " the glorious liberty " of 



ot Cbrist Save TOs? [85] 

environment, as well as of personal being. 
In such a salvation of the cosmos we shall 
find our coronation. Christ's death was in- 
tended to swallow up death, death in every 
form — the death which fills creation with 
sobs and heartbreaks, the death which 
brings pain and blight to plant and animal 
life, the death which has filled the earth 
with venoms, thorns, and thistles — all that 
has made ** creation red in tooth and claw," 
and armed it against the man of Eden. 
Man can never come to his own, until once 
again he shall have dominion over every 
hostile and malicious earthly thing; not 
until ** the wolf also shall dwell with the 
lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the 
kid; and the calf and the young lion and 
the fading together; and a little child shall 
lead them." Nay, not until the very morn- 
ing stars shall again sing together in unison 
with their glorified Lord. 

While now, man for a season is abased 
and " made a little lower than the angels," 
he IS yet as the exhibition of God's highest 



[36] Mow Does tbe 2)eatb 

glory to be " set above the heavens." He is 
to be '' crowned with glory and honor " 
(Ps. 8), and to be set above all the work 
of God's hands. Redemptive works, the 
work of God's heart, are unspeakably 
greater than creative works, the work of 
his hand. 

Now the potent energy to work all this 
transformation and glorification is the death 
of Christ extending itself to the whole cos- 
mos. This from the beginning was pur- 
posed in the Lamb " foreknown indeed (as 
slain), before the foundation of the world, 
but was manifested at the end of the times " 
(i Peter i : 20). This is the death which has 
" abolished death." " For this corruptible 
must put on incorruption, and this mortal 
must put on immortality; and so when this 
corruptible shall have put on incorruption 
and this mortal shall have put on immortality 
then shall be brought to pass the saying that 
is written, death is swallowed up in victory. 
O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where 
is thy victory?" (i Cor. 15 : 53, 55.) 



of Cbrist Save XIIb? [87] 

Christ is yet to be " Christus Consumma- 
tor '' as well as '' Christus Salvator!' 



Ube Etbical iDalues of tbe 
atonement 7 

BUT our discussion would be incom- 
plete if we did not go on to show that 
the death of Christ scripturally viewed, and 
extending itself in the various ways indi- 
cated, is always profoundly ethical. 

In the first place the atonement, as seen 
from God's point of view and as related to 
the whole universe as moral, was intended 
to meet a supreme ethical exigency which 
had arisen in that universe from the incom- 
ing of sin. There was a matter of ill desert 
attached to the sin-principle, and with this 
God had to deal, if he was righteously and 
adequately to save his creatures. This was 
the source of all true ethics in us ; and with 
this matter God did ethically and yet sav- 



[88] How 5)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

ingly deal. This root of ethics in God him- 
self anticipated and presupposed all other 
practical ethical conceptions which can come 
within the range of our thought. 

Then as to the effect of the atonement 
upon us to render our character ethical, as 
it tallies effect upon us, the atonement is 
as ethical as new creation could make 
it. The atonement is most intimately re- 
lated to the regeneration of believers. In 
Scripture thought, it is always presupposed 
that he who believes on Jesus will subject 
himself to his gracious authority. As he 
does this, he will experience the new birth ; 
and if he properly views and responds to 
Christ's work in his behalf, he will continue 
to live out his life in the habit of constant 
surrender to the new form of authority to 
which he has impliedly once for all sur- 
rendered. In other words, the deepest sort 
of a moral and even spiritual life is implied 
the moment one intelligently grasps what it 
is to be a Christian at all. 

In the initial confession of his faith, the 



of Cbrigt Save TOg? [89] 

believer is expected to acknowledge that in 
the act of his conversion, the old man has 
become resolved into death, and then in and 
by Christ's resurrection power he has been 
remade on the pattern of the risen Lord. 
Paul expresses this transcendent process in 
terms of a psychology peculiar to hir^self, 
quite outside the psychologies of the schools. 
However, once it is settled in the mind of 
the Christian, that revelation may be ex- 
pected to transcend his metaphysics — and 
one or the other always will have prece- 
dence in thought — this will not stumble 
him. Confessedly, the whole matter of the 
soul's reconatitution in Christ, is a super- 
metaphysical matter, and of course its 
psychology must be equally transcendent. 
According to Paul, the case in conver- 
sion is something like this : the old ego re- 
nounces itself, and through the power of 
the Holy Spirit a new ego takes its place. 
Of course this ego is new, and yet not new. 
" For ye died, and your life is hid with 
Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). To follow 



[go] Mow 2)oeg tbe Beatb 

the conception in the sixth chapter of Ro- 
mans, the soul becomes dead to the law-^r, 
rather, the law becomes as dead, so far as 
it can hold any mastery over one who has 
died to it — and then as alive to Christ, the 
soul becomes married to a new husband, 
even to the risen Lord'' (Rom. 7 : 2-4). 
As the result of this union the disciple has 
his " fruit unto sanctification, and the end 
eternal life" (Rom. 6 : 22). Henceforth, 
the soul serves as the new man " in newness 
of the spirit," rather than as the old man 
"in the oldness of the letter " (Rom. 7 : 6). 
The soul through its relation to Christ's 
death, with its necessary implicates, is re- 
constituted in God ; and reconstitution by 
the divine Spirit is unspeakably deeper in 
riioral quality than imitation or formal con- 
formity to a mere statute of law could ever 
be. The hope that any mere natural ethic 
consciously dependent on sinful man's 
power of will to do" right, can ever take the 
place of that deeper, organic thing of which 
wc have been speaking, is entirely futile. 



ot Cbrist Sat>e mst [91] 

In biblical thought, the regenerate soul 
is conceived as one who has jointly died 
with Christ, who has been jointly buried 
with him, who is now with him jointly 
raised, and jointly seated in the heavenlies. 
He is " in Christ " ; and as thus reconsti- 
tuted, the vitality of Christ himself flows 
into him, and will render him in the end a 
holy man. The entire course of the renewed 
man is to be habitually lived, as a second 
nature, on a new principle. Paul repre- 
sented himself as dying daily, as " always 
bearing about in the body the dying of 
Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be 
manifested in our body'* (2 Cor. 3 : 10). 
He says of professed believers that they 
have "been buried with him in baptism, 
wherein ye were raised with him through 
faith in the working of God, who raised him 
from the dead" (Col. 2 : 12). This work- 
ing of God was what brought the power to 
live in a new way. It was naught less than 
the operation of this infinite divine Spirit. 
It had in it all his efficiency. It was a 



[9^] Mow 5)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

power which Paul describes as " working 
in me mightily" (Col. i : 29).^ 

It is only by blindness to, or abuse of, the 
implications of the atonement, that any 
Christian can become even careless in re- 
spect to the moralities of the new life. 

HI 

XCbe Cbtttcb^s ©ne 3foun^atton 

THE Scriptures go so far as to say that 
he who does become thus careless, is 
thereby virtually guilty of a recrucifixion of 
the Lord Jesus. The remarkable passage in 
the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the He- 
brews has its significance in this very 
thought. The apostle says, " Wherefore, 
leaving the doctrine of the principles (or 
the elementary things) of Christ, let us 
press on unto perfection (or maturity) ; 
not laying again a foundation of repentance 

^Whcrcunto I am also toiling contending according 
to his inward working which is unwordly working itself 
in me with power. (Rendering of J. B. Rothcrham.) 



ot Cbrigt Save Xllg? [93] 

from dead works, and of faith toward God, 
of the teaching of baptisms, and of lay- 
ing on of hands, and of resurrection of the 
dead, and of eternal judgment" (Heb. 6 : 
I, 2). That is to say, a foundation of the 
gospel having been laid once for all in the 
sacrificial death of Christ, there is neither 
need nor possibility of laying it a second 
time. The only new foundation conceivable 
would be a different one — an entirely dif- 
ferent one. Such a foundation, could it be 
laid, would be destructive of everything 
contemplated by Christ or his gospel. The 
apostle is saying that it is entirely impossi- 
ble for such as thus shift the groundwork 
of things, to have any valid hope left of an 
ethical status on which they can hope for an 
acceptable life before God. Hence the per- 
tinency of the language used in verses four, 
five, and six. " For as touching those who 
were once enlightened, and tasted of the 
heavenly gift,, and were made partakers of 
the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word 
of God, and the powers of the age to come. 



[94] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

and then fall away, it is impossible to re- 
new them again unto repentance; seeing 
they crucify to themselves the Son of God 
afresh and put him to an open shame/' I 
am aware that this passage has by some 
been thought to be dealing with the question 
of the practical possibilities or impossibili- 
ties of personal restoration of one who has 
conceivably fallen out of a state of grace. 
It, however, seems to me much nearer to the 
spirit of the apostle's argument throughout 
the Epistle to interpret the falling away 
referred to as a falling away from the one 
only and exclusive foundation for ultimate 
holiness which has been laid in the death 
of Christ. The writer is speaking of the 
fatality of setting aside " the church's one 
foundation." This, of course, has to do with 
the whole matter of the status of the be- 
liever under the aegis of the one atoning 
death of Christ, eventuating in his high- 
priesthood. 

The " first principles of the doctrine of 
Christ " — ^the foundation principles — are 



of Cbrtgt Save mat [95] 

those principles which root themselves in his 
redeeming death. '' From these foundation 
principles/' therefore, reasons the apostle, 
*' let us press on unto perfection/' Failing 
of these, there is nothing to go back to. 
The real foundation of everything is in the 
redeeming death. Grant that this founda- 
tion is once for all laid, and such implied re- 
sults as these follow : repentance from dead 
works, faith toward God, the teaching of 
baptisms, laying on of hands (or bestowal 
of the Spirit), resurrection from the dead, 
and eternal judgment/' In other words, 
the language of the Hebrews, just con- 
sidered, implies what I have been pointing 
out in the preceding pages; namely, that 
the death of Christ is a death plus many 
other things which are involved in it : such 
as the resurrection, the baptisms symbolic of 
it, the gift of the Spirit, the anticipation of 
the judgment (as a saving judgment), re- 
lation to the powers of the age to come, etc. 
Now, argues the apostle, to abandon the 
old foundation, and to presume to lay a dif- 



[96] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

ferent one, is to do an abortive thing, nay a 
spiritually criminal thing; is logically to 
apostatize. Therefore, pleads the author of 
the Epistle, shun it. On the contrary, *' Let 
us press on (from the foundation already 
laid, other than which no man can lay) 
unto maturity." If one would realize how 
positive a thing is the conception of evan- 
gelical ethics entertained by the author of 
this Epistle, let him run through the series 
of impassioned injunctions to holy living 
pressed upon the conscience of the early 
church. " Let us fear," " Let us give dili- 
gence," " Let us draw near," " Let us con- 
sider," " Let us hold fast," " Let us call to 
remembrance," " Let us cast not away our 
beginning-confidence," " Let us lay aside 
every weight," " Let us follow peace," " Let 
us have grace," " Let brotherly love con- 
tinue," " Let us go forth to him without the 
camp bearing his reproach," " Let us offer 
up a sacrifice of praise to God continually," 
and much besides. 

Surely this does not sound as if this most 



ot Cbrigt Saye Tag? [97] 

evangelical of all writers would afford war- 
rant to any to indulge in non-ethical or even 
careless living, because they had been re- 
deemed by the one great sacrificial act of 
Christ's death. The arguments for holy 
living adduced in this most evangelical book, 
have never been matched in all literature. 

The author of this Epistle, whoever he 
was, takes the greatest pains to warn us 
against the presumption of seeking to lay 
any different foundation for practical liv- 
ing than that already laid. But especially to 
point out that to try to lay any other is to 
incur the double guilt of inviting responsi- 
bility for the recrucifixion of the world's 
Redeemer. We are sure this is not al- 
ways realized by those who show impatience 
of the evangelical unities. The fact is, that 
the one foundation of Christ's death as 
properly understood, once set aside, leaves 
no ground of salvation whatever in the bib- 
lical sense of the word. There is no other 
dependence. The first crucifixion of Christ 
was a sin which the divine clemency 

G 



[98] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

covered. God himself made provision for it, 
as Peter abundantly set forth in his sermon 
at Pentecost; but the recrucifixion of the 
crucified is a blasphemy so serious in im- 
port, as to negative all the terms of salva- 
tion ever promulgated even by the Grod of 
grace. Therefore to propose an ethic with- 
out the cross (assuming that the bearings 
of such a thing are understood), in Scrip- 
ture logic, is to invite damnation, even " the 
second death." This is to have '' trodden 
under foot the Son of God, to have counted 
the blood of the covenant wherewith he was 
sanctified an unholy (or common) thing, 
and to have done despite to the spirit of 
grace.'' It is to insult grace. " For if we 
sin wilfully after we have received the 
knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no 
more (as a groundwork for salvation), a 
sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation 
of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which 
shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. lo : 
26, 27). This world is a '' once for all " re- 
deemed world, or it is a twice for all suicid- 



oi Cbrist Save xas? [99] 

ing world, from the ruin of which there is 
at least no promise to save. 



Zhc Sin of Contempt of Grace 

A PASSAGE in the Epistle of Jude 
strikingly corroborates the teaching 
just adduced from Hebrews. This apostle 
is writing of what he calls " the common 
salvation." He is exhorting " those who are 
called beloved in God the Father, and kept 
for Jesus Christ." He says he was con- 
strained to exhort the church to " contend 
earnestly for the faith which was once for 
all delivered unto the saints." And then the 
apostle goes on to state that certain ones are 
foes of the church who will seek " to turn 
the grace of our God into lasciviousness (or 
wantonness), and denying our only Master 
and Lord, Jesus Christ." Now, after this pro- 
logue, the apostle proceeds to say, " I desire 



[loo] Mow 2)oeg tbe Beatb 

to put you in remembrance, though ye know 
all things once for all, that the Lord having 
saved a people out of the land of Egypt, 
afterward — the Greek word is dsurepoi^, 
meaning at a second stage — destroyed them 
that believed not." The point of this refer- 
ence is this: God by an act of pure grace 
had brought Israel out of Egypt — he had 
redeemed them; but this redemption of 
grace which he waited to consummate at 
Kadesh Barnea they despised. Therefore 
he turned them back into the wilderness to 
wander until that generation perished. He 
thus " destroyed them '^ — left them to perish 
a second time — for their contempt of grace. 
And the apostle gives two more illustrations 
of yet others who had turned special divine 
favor into " wantonness," for they would 
seek another basis of security from sin than 
that which the Divine favor had provided. 
So " the angels (in the prehistoric period) 
that kept not their own principality — ^that 
original assured standing of peace and 
safety, but afterward — at a second stage of 



of Cbrist Save Xllgt [iqi] 

rebellion against the divine security for 
them, left their proper habitation " ; and so 
God " hath kept (them) in everlasting 
bonds under darkness, unto the judgment 
of the great day." And still further, Jude 
instances the peoples of Sodom and Gomor- 
rah, as examples of another instance of 
those who at a second stage turned the 
proffered grace of God into wantonness, 
preferring the indulgence of their own 
grossness to the acceptance of the mercy 
represented to those cities by the visit of 
the redeeming angels who came to Lot, and 
impliedly, as I think, to all allied with him 
who would accept the Divine clemency in 
the spirit of it. So "these also — these 
wicked Sodomites — and the cities about 
them, having in like manner with these 
given themselves over to their characteris- 
tic vices and threatened their exercise upon 
the very angelic messengers that came to 
their city with a proffer of salvation with 
righteous Lot, '* are set forth as an exam- 
ple — an example of repudiators of grace — 



[io2] Mow 5)oes tbe Beatb 

suflfering the punishment of eternal fire " 
(Jude5-7). 

The teaching of all this unquestionably is, 
that to do despite to a salvation of grace 
when once it has been understood, as a 
finality, at that second stage of the tempta- 
tion which is ever recurring in the life of 
unbelieving men, is presumptuously to put 
one's self outside of any salvation which 
God has provided and promised. 

All hope of the final ethical attainment 
is organically connected with the death of 
Christ. It implies the incoming of the 
breath of the risen and glorified new Adam, 
alone equal to the need. If, at the begin- 
ning, it was necessary that God should 
breathe into the first Adam, that he might 
become " a living souV it was just as need- 
ful that the " Second man," " a life-giving 
spirit," should inbreathe the new man that 
was to be, in order to generate there the 
highest life, even the resurrection-life of the 
Son of God (i Cor. 15 : 45). On the birth 
day of the church, it was this " mighty rush- 



of Cbrigt Saye IHbI [103] 

ing breath" — ^not "wind" — which came 
from the God-man at the right hand of the 
Father, that empowered the disciples afresh 
for all the tasks of the new-born church. 



Ube iPower ot tbe Cross iriot 
©tttworn 

AND yet with all the solemnity of such 
teaching as that to which we have 
just referred in the preceding chapter we 
often now-a-days hear it said that the etnics 
connected with the atonement of Christ 
have become outworn: that the death of 
Christ as an ethical power has broken down. 

To this we reply that the ethics which 
logically and properly grow out of the death 
of Christ as the Scriptures set forth, has 
been but feebly applied. Especially has 
this been so in those quarters where it is 
often so flippantly spoken of. 

Between two errors the moral situation 



[io4] Mow Does tbe 2)eatb 

has grievously suffered. On the one hand, 
a crass view, which has narrowed the death 
of Christ to a mere pathetic tragedy, ending 
in the physical dying of Jesus, and that a 
dying severely apart from Deity, even as 
unjustly permitted or inflicted by Deity, has 
of course failed to beget the intended ethical 
power implied in the New Testament idea. 
The real situation involved in the nature of 
Christ's death, and its relation to men, has 
been sadly misconceived; and of course 
correspondingly false inferences have been 
drawn; and the whole matter of the death 
of Christ has been confusedly or falsely 
preached. Strong revolt in many quarters 
could not but result. 

On the other hand, an ultra-radical view, 
blind to the nature of Christ's person, and to 
the true import of his death, as a revelation 
of the depths of human sin, and inapprecia- 
tive of that death as a demonstration of the 
divine sacrificial love, has discarded that 
death in superficial impatience as having 
any other ethical value than that which 



ot Cbrigt Save Xllg? [105] 

would attach to some noble martyr. Of 
course those who thus view Christ's death 
would find little basis in it for moving men 
to such a righteousness as the claims of a 
holy God demand, or as a truly enlightened 
conscience calls for. Those who have fallen 
into this unfortunate and superficial nar- 
rowness, and who have taken up with mere 
natural ethics, as a well-meaning pagan 
would do, have sadly missed the way. 
Among many other mischievous results, 
they have failed to see themselves as either 
lost or savable in any true biblical sense. 
Between these two errors, the cause of true 
evangelical righteousness has grievously 
suffered. 

It cannot be ignored that in estimating 
the ethical values in the death of Christ, 
however truly viewed, the antipathy of the 
carnal heart has ever constituted a chief 
difficulty in the appreciation and application 
of these values. There is an *' offence of the 
cross," quite apart from all rational con- 
siderations concerning it, that mere reason 



[io63 How Does tbe Deatb 

cannot remove. In the end, however, if the 
moral situation is squarely faced, this ** of- 
fence of the cross," ^ by a profound paradox, 
becomes something in which to glory. The 
paradox cannot be escaped : it is involved in 
the thoroughness and divineness of the proc- 
ess of sin's cure. 



IRe&cmptfon an& Stcwar^sbip 

IN the practical application of the process 
of sin's cure, how profound an energy 
would be found in this principle of redemp- 
tion if it were applied to the recovery of men 
from their characteristic perversities, for ex- 
ample, from the power of greed ! 

During the recent visit to America of the 
Right Rev. A. F. Winnington Ingram, the 
lord bishop of London, he preached a ser- 
mon in New York in the hearing of some of 
the Wall Street magnates on " Christian 

^ See appendix E. 



ot Cbrigt Save TUs? [107] 

Stewardship." The bishop's text was the 
verse, " Render the account of thy steward- 
ship ; for thou canst be no longer steward " 
(Luke 16 : 2). The teaching was to the 
effect that Hfe was never an ownership but 
a stewardship. Man owns nothing as be- 
tween himself and God. '' If," said the 
bishop, " the principle of Christian steward- 
ship were truly carried out, it would cleanse 
the life on both sides of the Atlantic. All 
the evils of the world are due to the neglect 
of the Christian principle that we are here 
only as custodians of what we have, be it 
wealth or anything else." And on what did 
the thought-provoking bishop ground this 
element in ethics ? On nothing less than the 
fact that through Christ's gospel we are re- 
deemed beings : we have a redeemed status 
in this world — the only status that any one 
has — and the obligations that are ours under 
a redeemed economy, commit us universally, 
as redeemed beings to a grateful use of that 
which is put into our hands, to live out a 
career of stewardship, not only to God, but 



[io8] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

also to our fellows. Said the bishop, " That 
we are here as custodians of what we have, 
is founded on the fact that Christ died to re- 
deem men, and again place them in fair (or 
justified) standing in the world." '' If," 
continued the bishop, " city officials and 
government servants would live up to these 
two thoughts — that they are redeemed be- 
ings, and that as such they are stewards — 
there would be no boodling, no miscarriage 
of justice, and no broken hearts." 

The whole philosophy of the recovery, or 
better yet, of the preservation of our fellow- 
men from the immoderate desire for gain, 
whether from the love of property as such, 
or from the love of the game in the acquire- 
ment of it, is rooted, according to the phi- 
losophy of the bishop, in the principle of re- 
demption. It is from a loss of the sense of 
the redeemed position into which Christians 
have been brought by the death of Christ 
that many wealthy Christians, as they grow 
rich, lose that sense of stewardship which 
once characterized them. Is it not certain 



ot Cbrist Save ms? [109] 

that men who have become possessed of a 
passion for mere accumulation, if they ever 
escape its thrall, are more likely to do so in 
view of the passion of Calvary's cross than 
under any other influence whatsoever? 



iRe&emption IRecovcrino trom 
Crtminalitg 

THEN to take another type of perver- 
sity, say that of a criminal long hard- 
ened by whatever means, where but to the 
cross shall we look for a power equal to the 
recovery of such a one? Probably few lit- 
erary men of the last century more earnestly 
pondered this question than Victor Hugo. 
He was deeply engrossed with the convic- 
tion that the penal laws of his time in Europe 
were deeply responsible for the awful depths 
to which the criminal classes had sunk. But 
whatever was Hugo's immediate aim in his 
writings, the question ever uppermost in 



[no] Mow E)oeg tbe Beatb 

them is : '* Given such and such a pervert, 
how shall he be restored to righteousness 
and to God?'' Hugo's conception of the 
difficulty of the problem found its strongest 
concrete expression in the creation of his 
highly dramatic character, Jean \'aljean. 
This Valjean, for the crime of stealing a 
loaf of bread for the feeding of his sister's 
seven starving children, was sentenced to 
serve four years in the galleys, and then his 
sentence was repeatedly prolonged to fif- 
teen years miore for successive but vain 
efforts to escape. The result was that when 
he was released he came forth from the 
prison more a demon than a man. Petrified 
as the heart of this man had become, Hugo, 
however, believed there was a moral power 
able to restore him. This power Hugo 
lodged in that other creation of his genius, 
the good Monseigneur Myriel, or Bishop 

Bienvenu of D . 

On the fourth night after the release of 
Jean Valjean, this bishop at the risk of his 
own life gave hospice to the sorry ex-con- 



II 



of Cbrtgt Save Tag? [m] 

vict. The convict, however, v^as morally in- 
capable at first of responding to a mercy so 
foreign to him. So after sleeping for a 
few hours on the outside of the soft bed 
put at his disposal, he arose, crept through 
the partly open door of the bishop's room 
adjoining, looking leeringly and murder- 
ously upon the calm features of his unap- 
preciated benefactor, hesitating whether to 
kiss or to brain him, stole the bishop's table 
silver, slipped through the open window, 
leaped the wall like a tiger, and went his 
way to he knew not what. The next morn- 
ing found this Jean Valjean under arrest 
of the village gendarmes in possession of 
the stolen silver, and he was brought back 
to confront the bishop for a settlement. This 
bishop, however, surprised the gendarmes 
by insisting that not only the silver with 
which the convict had been seized, but also 
all the rest which remained to him — some 
fine candlesticks — had also been *' given " to 
Jean Valjean. So the officers of the law 
were dismissed and the good bishop, before 



[ii2] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

sending the ex-convict on his way, dispos- 
sessed of the sense of outlawry, whispered 
to him these words: "Jean Valjean, my 
brother, you no longer belong to evil but 
to good. It is your soul that I buy from 
you. I withdraw it from black thoughts, 
and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to 
God." All this the bishop had purposed to 
do, and he did, at the risk of his life. As 
Jean Valjean goes out from the bishop a 
second time, a short, sharp attack of his 
old diabolism, in his meeting with the little 
Savoyard, seized him, and then in the reflec- 
tion, the great deep of the man's nature is 
broken up; he who for nineteen years had 
not shed a tear, overflows with grief and 
becomes a renewed man. 

As the curtain falls on that sublime first 
act in Hugo's drama, we are permitted to 
see the renewed and penitent ex-convict — 
another Jean Valjean — " in the attitude of 
prayer, kneeling on the pavement in the 
shadow, in front of the door of the bishop's 
palace " — of that bishop who, for the poor 



of Cbrigt Save xgg? [113] 

convict's sake, had laid down his life and 
taken it again in a redemptive achievement. 
On what power less than this of the di- 
vinely sacrificial life, in its unique, expiating 
energy, could Hugo have built for such a 
moral miracle as he has pictured for us ? In 
every principle of his story, Hugo has been 
marvelously true to the New Testament 
idea of the atonement of God in Christ.^ We 
have only to raise the sacrificial, expiating 
suggestiveness of the good Bishop Welcome 
to the nth power, and ground it in Deity, 
and we have the biblical conception of the 
divine atonement, and one all the more ef- 
fective withal, because clothed with flesh 
and blood, thus reincarnating the divine 
idea. In actual life, the annals of the Salva- 
tion Army, of the Water Street Mission, 
New York, and kindred movements of a 

1 Elsewhere, in his ** Reveries on God," Hugo has this 
impressive comment on the atonement principle, as as- 
sociated with the spiritual principle originally in the 
mass. " I respect the Sunday mass in my parish. I 
attend it rarely; this is because I am assisting perpetu- 
ally, reverent, dreaming, and attentive, at that other 
eternal mass which God is celebrating night and day in 
nature, his great church." 



[ii4] Mow Does tbe 2)eatb 

sacrificial sort would supply numerous real 
instances such as that which Hugo's fancy 
has painted. Deeper, more original than 
this, there is no ethical power. 

cross that liftest up my head, 

I dare not ask to flee from thee; 

1 lay in dust life's glory dead. 

And from the ground there blossoms red 
Life that shall endless be. 



IRe&emptton ©vercoming 
Meatbentsm 

IF in a yet wider sphere we consider the 
task of renewing or elevating the moral 
ideals of those we call heathen ; where shall 
we find the power adequate but in Christ's 
cross? With respect to this situation, we 
need not paint conditions darker than they 
are. Heathen peoples are not utterly de- 
graded. There are bright spots even in that 
darkness. There are relics of natural re- 
ligion, and of primitive revelation also, ante- 



of Cbxiet Saye Tfts? [115] 

dating the ethnic religions which enter into 
them. These ethnic faiths themselves, with 
all their corruptions and perversions, have 
some values, and they witness to funda- 
mental verities. They have served under 
Providence to keep alive certain social and 
civic ideals of order and human government. 
They have their values for the family, the 
community, and the State. 

Nay more, since the incoming of the 
modern missionary movement, with its mes- 
sage of the Christian redemption, numerous 
people in Oriental lands, who as yet hold 
aloof from the Christian community, have 
received much light from Christ. Doubtless 
very many such are secretly true believers in 
him. To this fact Dr. Charles Cuthbert 
Hall, who among visitors to the East, has 
had exceptional opportunities for gaining 
the confidence of many whom no missionary 
resident in those lands would probably 
reach, has lately given most emphatic testi- 
mony. In a recent address before the 
American Board at Cleveland, he declared 



[ii6} Mow 5)oe8 tbe 5)eatb 

that in his last visit to India he came to 
have positive knowledge of great numbers 
of cultivated and educated Hindu gentle- 
men who no longer have association with 
the temples, who rather are devoted wor- 
shipers of the Lord Jesus Christ, but 
who, because of the embarrassment of 
the political situation, do not identify them- 
selves with the missionary community. 
Doctor Hall gave several striking instances 
of such. His testimony might be cor- 
roborated by many other witnesses. Doc- 
tor Hall, however, further brought out in 
his recent address that with all these encour- 
agements, there is this saddening feature 
also, which all interested in the missionary 
problem will do well to regard: namely, 
'' that whereas the Fatherhood of God is 
growing rapidly in the consciousness of cul- 
tivated men in India and in Japan, the 
sovereignty of Jesus Christ, in which is the 
very essence of the Christian religion, is a 
matter from which men draw back." " The 
tendency to decadence in the religious life 



ot Cbrist Save Hlg? [117] 

of the American people," also, Doctor Hall 
attributes to the same evil. 

" The Fatherhood of God," as Doctor 
Hall truly says, " has only become intelligent 
to human experience in Jesus Christ. ' He 
that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.' 
* No man cometh unto the Father but by 
me.'" *'How then," asks Doctor Hall, 
" can we assist the people of the East in the 
discovery of the sovereignty of the Lord 
Jesus Christ? " 

The Apostle Paul tells us in his first Epis- 
tle to the Corinthians that '' No man can 
say that Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit 
(i Cor. 12 : 3). And the apostle says this 
in a very significant connection. In the 
former part of the Epistle the apostle had 
been dealing with many carnalities, arising 
from its old heathenism, most blighting to 
the church at Corinth. Coming, however, to 
the twelfth chapter he rises to a higher and 
distinctive plane, and thus speaks : 

" Now concerning ' the spiritualities ' 
brethren, I would not have you ignorant 



[ii8] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

Ye know that when ye were Gentiles (or 
heathen), ye were led away unto those 
dumb idols, howsoever ye might be led." 
The characteristic working of idolatry was 
to lead its votaries into vagaries, they knew 
not what, and in directions they knew not 
whither. Now on this dark background of 
their previous condition, Paul paints the 
bright thing he wishes them to know and 
realize. That bright thing was this: that 
there was now open to them the knowledge 
of Jesus Christ as their Sovereign and Lord. 
" Wherefore," says the apostle, " I make 
known unto you, that no man speaking in 
the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema " ; 
that is, ' rejected '; and on the other hand, 
" No man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the 
Holy Spirit." 

How then is the great East to be led to 
say that Jesus Christ is Lord? We believe 
there is but one answer. It must be brought 
into the Spirit, that it may learn that high 
and blessed ascription. And this experience 
must come through the realization that 



of Cbrigt Save XHg? [119] 

Jesus is preeminently an atoning Saviour. 
Orientals need to be brought to precisely 
the point to which the convicted multitudes 
under Peter's sermon at Pentecost were 
brought, namely, that having been impliedly 
by their sin racial sharers in the crucifixion 
of the Lord Jesus, they must when enlight- 
ened either persist in the sin which involves 
rejection of him, and in their carnality call 
him "anathema" (rejected), or they must 
entirely reverse their attitude, accept him, 
and trusting in his atoning death for their 
salvation, call him " Lord." No third 
ground is possible. It was the realization of 
this dilemma that overwhelmed Peter's con- 
gregation with conviction. They saw that 
that same Jesus whom they had wickedly 
crucified had been proved by his resurrec- 
tion to be the Christ and Lord, and they 
could do no other than cry out: " Men and 
brethren, what shall we do ? " They were 
at first smitten with despair. Peter's answer 
gave them relief. It was the same answer in 
principle, though different in form, that 



[i2o] Mow S)oes tbe 2)eatb 

Doctor Hall would have given; and which 
he has so strongly stated in his chapter on 
'' The Recovery of the Apostolic Theology " 
in his book " The Universal Elements of the 
Christian Religion." ** So repent that your 
profession will speak of your own death and 
resurrection with that Saviour whose death 
and resurrection proves his Lordship/' In 
other words, " Give to the atoning work of 
Christ the place that he himself gives to it 
in his dying and living again; and in the 
very realization of that death-resurrection 
process you will become conscious for your- 
selves of the reality of the Lordship of 
Christ." 



XCbc Sovcrefants of Saviourboob 

IN order to that power over one's life 
which will produce Christian character, 
the sovereignty of Christ must be experi- 
enced through his Saviourhood. It is some- 



ot Cbrist Qavc ma? [121] 

thing deeper than an inference from an 
argument. As Dr. A. J. Gordon used to 
represent : **The tinkling of bells alterna- 
ting with the pomegranates on the skirts of 
our High Priest's garments above, can be 
heard by the ear spiritually attuned.'' The 
actual living Christ can be experientially 
known as alive for us. After the surrender 
of our rebellious wills to his will, by the 
Holy Spirit which is given unto us, we 
intuitively know that he lives and reigns 
above in our behalf. 

One of Doctor Hall's hosts, an Indian 
prince, remarked to him : " I have visited 
the West, and the most wonderful thing in 
the West that I have seen is that which I 
may call the Christian character of some of 
your greatest Christian men " ; and then he 
added these significant words : " So far as I 
can analyze the situation, it seems to me that 
in order to produce this peculiar thing 
which we call Christian character, there 
shall be (needs to be) a mystical faith in 
Christ as Saviour." Aye, verily ! This high 



[i22] Mow g)oeg tbe jPeatb 

Christian character in the West or East, 
wherever it exists, is primarily due to the 
experience in the soul of a mastery gained 
over it through the realization of Christ as 
Saviour. This Christ the Saviour, in time, 
by virtue of his experienced Saviourhood, 
is thereby welcomed as the accepted Master 
of the soul. Aye, and he is a Master worth 
having. " He conquers rebel me, and hav- 
ing disarmed me gives me back my sword." 
Perhaps no modern mind better understood 
this paradox than the blind, now sainted, 
George Matheson of Scotland, who thus 
phrased it : 

Make me a captive, Lord, 

And then I shall be free; 
Force me to render up my sword, 

And I shall conq'ror be. 
I sink in life's alarms 

When by myself I stand; 
Imprison me within thine arms 

And strong shall be my hand. 

My heart is weak and poor 

Till it the master find; 
It has no spring of action sure. 

It varies with the wind. 



of Cbrtst Save xas? [123] 

It cannot freely move 
Till thou has wrought its chain; 

Enslave it with thy matchless love, 
And deathless it shall reign. 

My will is not my own 

Till thou hast made it thine; 
If it would reach the monarch's throne 

It must its crown resign: 
It only stands unbent 

Amid the clashing strife, 
When on thy bosom it has leant 

And found in thee its life, 

*' The one whom before I feared, I now dis- 
cover to be my surest friend. He so loved 
my well-being that he himself entered into 
obligation for my sin and guilt, and having 
borne it, welcomes me to share his throne." 
The soul's chief need is to find the right 
master — for master of some kind as a de- 
pendent being the soul will and must have — 
and having found him in the Christ of God, 
the soul returns to its normal, and besides 
finds all the guilty past forgiven and can- 
celled. 

In bringing the heathen to accept the 
sovereignty of Christ, it is of the first mo- 



[i24] Mow goes tbe 5)eatb 

ment that they should be impressed in the 
concrete by missionaries of such a stamp as 
show that they themselves are subject to 
that sovereignty, brought to it through some 
deep and critical extremity of their life. It 
is the man who has been rescued by Christ 
— ^by his superhuman power and grace, not 
one who merely believes a doctrine about 
him — who really knows Christ. Orientals 
will come into subjection to Christ only 
through similar experiences of the salvation 
of Christ. The blessedness of the sovereign- 
ty is learned by paradox, only through the 
absolutely surrendered will, and this surren- 
dered will comes through some sweet persua- 
sion. To be of worth, it must be voluntary. 
It is usually made possible through the heart- 
break which occurs in some clear vision of 
the surprisingly sacrificial work of Calvary. 
The vision of the cross and the surrendered 
will are correlatives of each other. Some- 
times one and sometimes the other is first 
in the order of time. Each eventuates in 
the other. The realization of Saviourhood 



ot Cbrtgt Save XIls? [125] 

induces surrender, and through the surren- 
der of the will, the Holy Spirit brings the 
sense of salvation. 

Bishop Handley Moule, of Durham, Eng- 
land, in the central crisis of his rare spirit- 
ual life thus sung of it : 

My glorious Victor, Prince Divine, 
Clasp these surrendered hands in thine; 
At length my will is all thine own, 
Glad vassal of a Saviour^s throne. 

My Master, lead me to thy door, 
Pierce this now willing ear once more, 
Thy bonds are freedom, let me stay 
With thee to toil, endure, obey. 

Yes, ear and hand and thought and will, 
Use all in thy dear slavery still; 
Selfs weary liberties I cast 
Beneath thy feet, there hold them fast ! 

Tread them still down, and then I know 
These hands shall with thy gifts overflow ; 
And quickened ears shall hear the tone 
Which tells me thou and I are one. 

Other things being equal, the millions of 
India, China, and Japan will be brought 
under the sovereignty of Christ in propor- 



[i26] Mow Woes tbe 2)eatb 

tion as a biblical view of the saving death of 
Christ is preached, and as the preachers of it 
embody their doctrine in their own person- 
ahties, as did the good bishop in Hugo's 
story. The only men who ever have had sav- 
ing power over the heathen are those who 
have lived under the spell of the Christ of 
Calvary : who themselves have become per- 
sonified extensions of the atoning principle. 



Japanese Uropbies of tbe Cross 

DOUBTLESS one of the highest types 
of Japanese Christianity yet devel- 
oped among Orientals was the late Joseph 
Hardy Neesima, the founder of the Doshi- 
sha College at Kyoto ; thanks mainly, under 
God, to the highly Christian treatment of his 
providential foster-father, the late Alpheus 
Hardy of Boston, and his equally Christian 
instructor at Amherst College, President 
Julius H. Seelye. The seriousness with 



of abvist Save mst [127] 

which the humble-hearted Seelye viewed his 
responsibility may be inferred from the cir- 
cumstance that on the first night after Nee- 
sima was entered as a student at Amherst, 
the godly president lay awake all night re- 
flecting on the charge laid upon him in the 
direction to his college of its first Oriental 
student. 

A feature of Neesima's Christianity was 
that he had a keen appreciation of the vi- 
carious and redeeming work of Christ. 
During the past summer I found myself, on 
a second visit to the East, a visitor to 
the Doshisha College at Kyoto. Passing 
through one of the several buildings, my 
guide, one of the devoted teachers of the in- 
stitution, remarked : " This is the room in 
which one morning at a chapel exercise 
Neesima broke to shivers a bamboo cane in 
vicarious infliction upon himself of a pun- 
ishment deserved by some disorderly boys in 
the school, but whom Neesima in his holy 
love preferred to spare rather than punish." 
Fragments of that shivered cane are still 



[i28] Mow 2>oeg tbe 2)eatb 

preserved in Japan as mementos of the 
Christly spirit of the revered Neesima. 

A second striking example of the way in 
which another Japanese of Neesima's spirit 
was impressed by the same atonement-be- 
Heving President Seelye, because he himself 
so illustrated the atonement, is that of Uchi- 
mura, an earnest Christian man yet living in 
Tokyo. He too, with great trepidation, 
once went to Amherst College to seek ad- 
mission as a student. From some things 
he had heard of the virility of the able 
President Seelye, he went as if he were 
" going to his doom, expecting to be stunned 
by the president's imperious and Platonic 
majesty.'' Instead, however, he met a 
character of rare Christian meekness, " a 
large, well-built figure, the leonine eyes suf- 
fused with tears, the warm grasp of the 
hands unusually tight, orderly words of wel- 
come and sympathy," so that as he says, " I 
at once felt a peculiar ease in myself. I con- 
fided myself to his help, which he most 
kindly promised. I retired, and from that 



ot Cbrtst Save msT [129] 

time on my Christianity has taken an en- 
tirely new direction. . . Satan's power over 
me began to slacken ever since I came 
into contact with him. Gradually I was ex- 
orcised of my sins, original and derived." 
Uchimura speaks also, with deep feeling, of 
a morning in which, in the presidents class, 
he was encouraged openly before his fel- 
lows to narrate how he came to believe 
Christianity as the truth ; how especially he 
found the " reconciliation of the moral 
schism (in his soul) only in Christ," and 
concluded his testimony with Luther's 
words, " I can do no other, so help me God." 
The logical outcome of this splendid 
mastery of the great president over this 
Oriental, was of course to bring him sweetly 
under the sovereignty of the Christ who was 
his own Saviour. 

It may well be questioned whether any 
who have recently arisen in Japan that have 
fallen back upon natural ethics in lieu of the 
cross-principle for moral power over their 
fellows, or for bringing others of their long 
I 



[i3q] Mow 2)oe8 tbc 2)eatb 

paganized countrymen into subjection to 
the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, have found 
any substitute worthy of the name. Just 
now it is Japan's temptation to seek such a 
substitute, and it threatens the foundations 
of everything Christian. 



u 

IPower ot tbe Cross ®ver a 
Min&u /IDob 

DR. JACOB CHAMBERLAIN ^ of the 
American Reformed Church, who 
labored a half-century as a missionary in 
India, in the year 1863 found himself 
with some of his native helpers within 
a walled city in the Nizam's kingdom 
of Hyderabad. The city was full of Brah- 
man priests and Mohammedan zealots. 
On discovering the Christian mission- 
ary in their midst, they ordered him to 

^ Recently deceased. 



of Cbrist Save Xflg? [131] 

leave the place at once; and a rabble had 
been incited to stone him. Doctor Cham- 
berlain, however, bravely facing the mob 
thus spoke : " Brothers, it is not to revile 
your gods that I have come this long way; 
far from it. I have come with a royal mes- 
sage from a King far higher than your 
Nizam. I have come to tell you a story 
sweeter than mortal ear ever heard before. 
But it is evident that this multitude does not 
care to hear it. I, however, see five men 
before me, who I perceive (from their sym- 
pathetic faces) wish to hear my story. Will 
you all please step back a little and allow 
these five to hear? When I have finished 
you may come forward and throw your 
stones." Then in a subdued tone the mis- 
sionary addressed the Brahmans : " What 
is it that you chant as you go to the 
river for your daily ablutions? Is it not 
this? And the missionary chanted in Sans- 
krit a few strains from one of their Vedas, 
the meaning of which was : " I am a sinner, 
my actions are sinful. My soul is sinful. 



[i3g] Mow 5)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

All that pertains to me is polluted with sin. 
Do thou, O God, that hast mercy on those 
who seek thy refuge, do thou take away my 
sm. 

These Brahmans at once became the mis- 
sionary's friends. One who correctly chants 
their Vedas and their Mantras is always 
looked up to with respect. ** Now," con- 
tinued the missionary, " do you know how 
God can do what you ask? How he can 
take away the burden of your sin and give 
you relief? Brothers, is it possible for us 
to expiate our own sins? Can we by pain- 
ful journeys to all the holy places change 
those sinful natures that you bemoan ? Does 
not your own Telugu poet, Vemana, say: 

'Tis not by roaming deserts wild, nor gazing at 

the skies; 
T is not by bathing in the stream, nor pilgrimage 

to shrine; 
But thine own heart must thou make pure, and 

then, and then alone 
Shalt thou see him no eye hath kenned, shalt thou 

behold thy king? 

How then can our hearts be made pure so 



of Cbrist Sax>e mg? [133] 

that we may see God? I have learned the 
secret ; I will tell it you." 

Then, says Doctor Chamberlain, I told 
the story of stories, recounted the love of 
God the Father, the birth of Jesus in the 
manger of Bethlehem, his wonderful life 
here below, his blessed words, his marvelous 
deeds of healing and mercy, and the mob 
became an audience. Gradually I had 
raised my voice until as I spoke in the clear 
and resonant Telugu, all down those streets 
the multitude could hear; and as I told 
them of the Saviour's rejection by those he 
had come to save, and pictured the scene of 
Calvary, in the graphic words he himself 
gave me that day, when for us and our sal- 
vation he was left to cry, " My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — told 
them of the laying his body in the tomb, of 
his bursting the bars of death and coming 
forth triumphant over the last enemy ; and 
that all we now had to do was to repent and 
forsake our sins and lift up prayer to him, 
I saw tears coursing and dropping on the 



[134] Mow 2)oe8 tbe 2)eatb 

pavement, from which they had torn up the 
stones with which to stone us. 

" Now," said I, *' folding my arms and 
standing before them, I have finished my 
story. You may stone me. I will make no 
resistance." Stone him then ! They could 
no more have stoned him than they could 
stone the angel Gabriel ! The same power 
that held in leash the lions before Daniel held 
them in restraint. " No, no ! " said that 
cowed Indian mob, " we do not want to 
stone you now. We did not know whose 
messenger you were, nor what you had 
come to tell us. Do those books that you 
have tell more about this wonderful Re- 
deemer?" "Yes," said I, "this is the 
history of his life on earth." And taking up 
the Gospel of Luke, I read brief portions 
here and there, adding, " I have not told 
you half of his gracious words and deeds. 
Would you not like to buy some of the his- 
tories of the Redeemer Jesus so that you can 
learn all about him ? " They purchased all 
the gospels and tracts we had, and appointed 



of Cbttgt Save TOg? [135] 

a deputation of their best men to escort us 
to our camp, begging us to forgive them for 
the insults they had heaped upon us for they 
knew not whose messengers we were. ^ 

There are two things in the preceding in- 
cident important to note. First, that the 
power in this appeal to subdue the passion 
of the mob was the story of self-sacrifice in 
a Redeemer who was willing to give him- 
self to expiate the guilt and stain which 
even the Vedic hymns confessed were be- 
yond man's power to remove — the story of a 
full and free divine pardon and cleansing. 
Secondly, that the spirit of this same self- 
sacrifice in the missionary, which gave him 
the courage voluntarily to face the mob, 
and welcome even like Stephen, his stoning 
unto death, if he could but deliver his mes- 
sage, reenforced the story and gave it 
power. It was an instance of the power of 
doctrine incarnate in personality. 

These two things — the intrinsic quality of 

1 This narrative is condensed from a leaflet published 
by the Reformed Church Mission Board, New York. 



[13^] Mow g)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

the unique story and the living embodiment 
of it, at the risk of his Hfe, in the missionary 
hirriself — under the divine Spirit were what 
conquered the mob and brought it into a 
hitherto unheard-of subjection to a divine 
authority. These were the conquering 
forces subduing to the sovereignty of Christ. 
The appreciation of that sovereignty de- 
pended on something behind it. That some- 
thing was the new perception and apprecia- 
tion of the divine Saviourhood of Christ. 
It was this which commended the sover- 
eignty as worthy. 

It was the combination of these two things 
— Christ's objective sacrificial work and his 
own sacrificial life — so wondrously in John 
G. Paton, of the New Hebrides, that made 
him invincible among the cannibals of Ani- 
wa. Even those bloodthirsty savages were 
won by thousands into adoring subjection 
to Paton's majestic moral power and to 
Paton's Lord. 

When and where, however, among any 
heathen people, have abstractions on morals, 



of Cbvist Save XHs? [137] 

as exhibited in Jesus himself as a mere ex- 
ample, apart from the atoning reaHties, ever 
produced such renewals in life and charac- 
ter as have marked evangelical work in the 
South Seas and in numberless other mission 
lands? It is by these atoning realities, O 
Galilean, that thou hast conquered. 



IP 

TLcetimows of 2)r* ©riffitb 5obn 
of Cbina 

RECENTLY a company of missionary 
secretaries by arrangement met in 
Yonkers, N. Y., the veteran Griffith John, 
who for over fifty years has labored as a 
missionary in China, and who was about to 
sail again, at seventy-six years of age, to de- 
vote the remnant of his days to China's sal- 
vation. Located as he has been in Hankow, 
the great central city of that empire, for 
forty-five years, he and his missionary asso- 



I 



[133] Mow 5)oes tbe 2)eatb 

dates of the London Mission have wrought 
on until now about eight thousand Chris- 
tians are connected with the mission under 
the oversight of about twenty associated 
missionaries. 

At the meeting referred to, after a formal 
engrossed address was presented to Doctor 
John, and several informal addresses had 
been made, expressing the greetings and ap- 
preciations of the several missionary so- 
cieties of this country on his long and ef- 
fective career, Doctor John responded at 
considerable length, taking his brethren 
closely into his confidence. 

The great missionary told us of a time, 
" back in the seventies," when he passed 
through a period of great wretchedness on 
account of his " lack of power," and of how 
new power came to him, much as it came to 
Mr. Moody in New York one day, just be- 
fore he went to England for his greatest 
campaign there. 

But deep down, far below everything else 
which the great missionary testified of that 



of Cbtist Save TUs? [139] 

day, was this : " I have been," said he, " a 
strong believer in the atonement; not that 
I understand it, but the fact that we have 
the remission of sins through Christ, and 
this fact resting upon another fact, the vi- 
carious sufferings of Christ, and that now 
that he is risen and lives forever, he is equal 
to anything even in China. My theme has 
ever been, Jesus Christ can save from sin, 
from any sin whatsoever, the sin of opium- 
smoking, the sin of gambling, or of im- 
purity, or aught else." 

The experienced veteran then went on to 
give particular instances of salvation, as il- 
lustrated in his field. He told of one Liu 
the Sawyer. One day this man Liu came to 
the missionary and said, " You have been 
telling us that Jesus can save from sin, then 
he should be able to save me." " He is," re- 
sponded the missionary. " What are your 
sins? " " They are gambling, opium-smok- 
ing, and many more." From his own ac- 
count the man could scarcely have been 
worse. '' Then," said Doctor John, " I took 



[i4o3 Mow 5)oeg tbe 5)eatb 

the man into the vestry of the chapel, where 
we could be alone, and I got out of him 
more specific confessions. Then I asked 
him, can you trust Christ to save you from 
these sins ? " He answered " yes/' " Then," 
said I, '* let us pray." *' And we got down 
together, and the man prayed for himself. 
He accepted Christ and was saved ; he faced 
about, got victory over his sins, and for 
thirty years he has lived faithfully and led 
many others to Christ." 

Doctor John also told us of another case 
of a man named Wei, who at one time said, 
" Surely there is no hope for me." " Why 
not?" asked the missionary. ''Because I 
am such a confirmed opium-smoker and 
gambler. My father and my mother also 
were gamblers, and I have gambled all my 
life, and I could not possibly stop." " But 
Christ can save you from even that, if you 
will." " Then he shall," responded the man. 
'* He also knelt down and gave himself up 
and was thoroughly saved; and he became 
an evangelist, a real apostle of wonderful 



ot Cbrt8t Save VXsl [141] 

power." Doctor John said he thought this 
man was the means of winning nearly two 
thousand souls to Christ in the district 
where he lived. The missionary then 
added, " If you would bring men into sub- 
jection to the mastery of Christ, dismiss 
your habit of saying, ' Jesus can save from 
sin in general ' ; get men to be definite in 
making their confessions; and then say to 
them, Jesus can put his finger on that sin, 
and he can save you from that sin." 

To derive the just lesson from the exam- 
ples quoted : is not the law of power under 
the Spirit of God in this matter of bringing 
the heathen into subjection to Christ two- 
fold ? first, in the preaching of the Saviour- 
hood of Jesus Christ through his redeeming 
cross? and secondly, in the correlative ha- 
bitual and manifest submission of the 
preacher himself to that same Saviourhood? 

He who lives and works upon this plane 
will also be able to tell how the death of 
Christ saves, and saves unto the uttermost. 

What is needed is that on a universal 



[i42] Mow 2)oeg tbe Deatb 

scale, in all lands where Christ's work is at- 
tempted, there shall be a return to such 
ideals and practices as those represented in 
such apostles as Neesima and Paton, as 
Chamberlain and Griffith John. 



Ube Cross tbe Sours Xast 
iResource 

THE great Albrecht Ritschl, after years 
of profound study, seemed to have 
persuaded himself, as he has since persuaded 
many others in Europe and America, that 
the Christian religion can find a sufficient 
basis for faith in the mere subjective realm 
— the experiential — apart from the validity 
of the transcendent historic facts, as revealed 
in the Christian Scriptures. But this same 
Ritschl when he lay dying, fell back upon 
the historic and objective cross of Christ. 
True, years before, in his '' History of Piet- 



of Cbrjgt Save xgg? [143] 

ism," Ritschl selected for special criticism 
Paul Gerhardt's rendering of Bernard of 
Clairvaux's hymn, known as the " Passion 
Hymn": 

'' O Haupt voll Blut und Wtmden/' (" O 
sacred head once wounded.") The point of 
Ritschl's objection was that the hymn failed 
to strike the true Christian note in so dwell- 
ing on the *' physical sufferings of Christ " 
instead of on the *' inner motive of obedi- 
ence." 

The very terms of the criticism indicate 
the confusions of thought that even in the 
minds of scholarly men have attended refer- 
ences to the atonement. We should quite 
agree with Ritschl that the " physical suf- 
ferings of Christ " by no means adequately 
represent the atonement. They are a minor 
part of those sufferings, as is urged in the 
earlier part of this discussion. Just what 
Ritschl meant by the " inner motive of 
obedience" also is ambiguous. If by " obedi- 
ence " he meant obedience to that judgment- 
claim which required that God-in-Christ 



[i44] Mow 2)oeg tbe 2)eatb 

should become responsible for man's sin and 
guilt, and in essence taste it in man's behalf, 
if man is to be saved, we would not demur. 

In any case, whatever at an earlier stage 
of his life Ritschl believed the sufferings of 
Christ to be, or to represent, it is comforting 
to faith to know that in his last experience, 
as we are told in his life, he turned to that 
very Passion Hymn to which he was once so 
averse, as best expressing the ground of 
his inmost faith. In this light how mean- 
ingful even to him must have been this 
stanza : 

Be near me when I'm dying, 

O show thy cross to me! 
And for my succor flying, 

Come, Lord, and set me free! 
These eyes new faith receiving, 

From Jesus shall not move; 
For he who dies believing, 

Dies safely, through thy love. 

To this same basis of rest and comfort we 
may depend, every truly Christian soul de- 
spite its temporary aberrations, in the last 
hour will assuredly turn. 



ot Cbtjgt Save TUB 1 [145] 

In such a return, the soul is led into the 
godlike in character — for the highest self- 
expression of God is a redemptive sacrifi- 
cial expression. To effect this, the atoning 
death of Christ is the direct and all-efficient 
agent. An agency which in its effect on 
character results thus, commends itself as 
deeply, divinely ethical, and so profoundly 
saving. In the death hour the celestial light 
will be shed on the question, how the death 
of Christ works to save us. 

How can I better close this discussion 
than with the extraordinary benediction 
with which the Epistle to the Hebrews 
closes, almost every phrase of which is sig- 
nificant of the ethical power of the cross ? 

*' Now the God of peace, who brought 
again from the dead the great Shepherd of 
the sheep with the blood of an eternal cove- 
nant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect 
in every good thing to do his will, working 
in us that which is well-pleasing in his sight 
through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory 
forever and ever, amen ! ** 

K 



[i46] HppenMi H 

HppenMi H 
Ubc Htonement an Hcbievcmcnt 

No animal ever went to its death in 
conscious and purposeful love for 
others. No man, purposely dying for 
others, ever came back to a second life to 
present the finished first life unto God. The 
Son of God did both. He was first, on 
earth, the spotless and infinitely precious 
Victim. He was next, in heaven, the Priest, 
offering himself. . . Jesus was constituted 
by resurrection the " First-begotten from the 
dead " ; ^ constituted High Priest " after the 
power of an indissoluble life." ^ Ascending, 
above all the lower heavens, and in and 
through those heavens, as along a new 
** path of life '' ^ shewn to him by the Fa- 
ther, into the very presence of God, he there 
** appeared '' in our behalf ; offering — what? 
offering his " body," himself, his perfected 

^Col. I : i8; Rev. i : 5, 6. « 7 : i6. 

8Ps. 16 : II. 



Bppenbii H [147] 

and ended, his triumphantly surrendered 
earthly life. He entered " through means of 
his own blood," ^ which simply stands for 
that perfected and surrendered life which, 
as we know, was terminated by violent 
blood-shedding. That is how he entered. 
Nothing could bar his way. No flaming 
sentinel could forbid his access to the inner- 
most sanctuary of the Divine Presence. 
Yea, with that price in his hand — with that 
plea on his lips — no law, no power could 
stay his progress ; upward " above all the 
heavens " he still ascended ; inward, and 
still further inward, he penetrated; until, 
coming in before the Uncreated Light, he 
was once for all and forever accepted. 

He — there and thus and then — " dis- 
covered age-abiding redemption." ^ He 
" found " it. So the Greek says, and why 
should we tone it down ; why should we di- 
lute it? Why should we shrink, by saying 
merely " obtained " ? Nay, eurisko; the verb 
that has given us eureka ! He " found " 

^ 9 : 12 * Ibid. 



[i48] Hppen6ii H 

it. He had been seeking it all his life of 
humiliation and toil and shame ; and now he 
'' found '' it. The ages had been seeking it, 
from the time man fell; the priests of all 
ages, with their blood-streaming victims, 
had been seeking it; but could not discover 
it. But, now, here, in heaven, before the 
throne, Jesus our Lord the Son of God 
"found" it! 

Well might the eloquent writer of this 
marvelous introduction place his verb, poieo, 
in the middle voice, and thus warrant our 
rendering it " achieved " as affirmed of an 
act redounding to the credit of him who 
dared and did it, constituting it an " achieve- 
ment '' to be forever after celebrated in story 
and in song. 

Of course, the "purification" (accom- 
plished, Heb. 1:3) was the fountain-head, 
or summary, sacrificial provision of purifi- 
cation, once for all secured when the peer- 
less sacrifice was offered and accepted. It 
was not and could not be the individual ap- 
plication of the purifying potency to the 



Hppen&tx a [149] 

consciences of men yet unborn. That was 
impossible with regard to consciences not 
yet in being, and therefore not yet defiled. 
But it is important to grasp what actually 
lies before us in the words : '* The purifica- 
tion — that is the sacrificial provision and 
potency of purifying guilty consciences — 
was then once for all completed." 

The Greek is singularly careful to make 
this quite clear. For whereas this is the third 
great participle flowing out from that great 
pronoun " who " that was to carry the grand 
burden of thought to a climax, this third 
participle is in a different tense to the two 
preceding it. They are " present " or in- 
cipient participles, whose force runs on in- 
definitely ; but this is " aoristic," rounded 
off, complete, preparing the way for the 
next movement, forming a firm step for the 
next verb to rest on. Read the passage 
thus: Who being and remaining the irra- 
diated brightness of his glory and the exact 
representation of his very being; (who) 
bearing up and continuing to bear up all 



[i5o] Hppen&ii 3B 

things by the utterance of his power — both 
participles being inceptive; but now with a 
change : *' purification of sins having there 
and then completely achieved, he sat down." 
For nice precision, and for an open and ef- 
fective march of thought, it is not easy to see 
how language could go further, unless by 
that larger amplification which we find in 
the body of the Epistle. Keep this in mind : 
being, bearing up, having achieved — sat 
down. The seeker of redemption, having at 
length discovered it, in triumph " sat 
down! " (J. B. Rotherham, in " Studies in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews," pp. 37-40.) 



BppenMi B 

XCbe IPotnt ot IDiew ot tbe Hpostolfc 
UestimonB 

WHEN we bear in mind that not one 
of the New Testament writers pro- 
duced a manuscript that bears his name 
until long after the resurrection had become 



Hppen&ijc 3B [isO 

a well-authenticated fact of history, we see 
that the death of Christ in their view could 
not have been looked upon as a mere 
tragedy and a sign of failure, but as the 
very opposite, even as a consummate 
achievement. Nor do we wonder that such 
a fact became so central in their witness and 
writings. At first none of them had under- 
stood Christ in the references to his death. 
They would have prevented that death if 
they could. During three days subsequent 
to the crucifixion they were despairing over 
what they supposed his death to mean. 
They thought his career as a Redeemer was 
ended; but shortly they saw the death cul- 
minating in the rising again. During the 
several Christophanies that followed, and 
particularly at Pentecost, they came to un- 
derstand the nature of that death and its 
far-extending power over all the world. 
They then recovered the faith they had 
well-nigh lost; they had new and pro- 
founder experiences of the quickening 
energy of the cross, they gloried in it, and 



[15^] HppenMi 3B 

set forth their matured witness as the Evan- 
gel of the ages. This view-point of the New 
Testament writers is a matter frequently 
overlooked on the part of Bible readers. 
They think of the paragraphs of a Matthew, 
a Luke, or a James as if they were jotted 
down at the time of the occurrences or the 
day after. They overlook the fact that the 
subject-matter of the wondrous things writ- 
ten in the Gospels and Epistles had been 
brought to the remembrance of the writers 
by the Holy Spirit, been meditated upon, 
discussed, and by divine superintendence 
had been matured for record decades before 
it was given to the world. All this also had 
occurred in anticipation of certain martyr- 
dom. Under these conditions, how weighty 
becomes the testimony of a Paul, a Peter, 
or a John the Aged, from his lone exile in 
Patmos. We now perceive with new clear- 
ness, these " eye-witnesses of his majesty " 
to be seers indeed, with open vision of 
heaven's secrets, and with them commis- 
sioned to evangelize the whole earth. 



HppenMi C [153] 

HppcnMi C 
(5o& a Sufferer 

IN answer to the question, " Is it not a 
censure on the Eternal Justice that Je- 
sus should have been treated as the substi- 
tute for a guilty race, and should have been 
allowed to drink its bitter cup ? '' Dr. John 
Watson replies : " One forgets that his 
mind is again held in bondage by the condi- 
tions and limitations of human life. Who 
is this Eternal Judge but the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Who is 
this Victim but the Eternal Son of God? 
It is therefore God who judges, and it is 
therefore God who suffers; and if the 
Judge himself be willing to expiate the 
penalty, then surely law could not be more 
splendidly vindicated, and the high ends of 
justice more fully gained. If it be counted 
a noble thing in a lowly member of the 
human race to obey the law of sacrifice, is 
this high achievement to be denied to God 



[154] Hppen&ii 2) 

himself? In all this universe is there to be 
only one person, not only absolved from 
this highest of laws, but also forbidden its 
fulfilment, and that person to be God? Is 
it not more reasonable to suppose that if the 
cross had become the condition of ethical 
perfection in human life, it has also been all 
along the condition of the perfect holiness of 
God, so that the sacrifice of God in Jesus 
Christ his Son is the very crown and glory 
of the highest law?'' ("Doctrines of 
Grace," pp. 94, 95.) 



HppcnMi D 
H penal Element in Cbrfsrs Deatb 

WE can in a measure understand 
why Jesus agonized in Gethsemane 
when we listen to what he said in the upper 
room. As he gave the bread and wine, the 
sjrmbol of his love and of his death, to his 
disciples, he declared that his blood was to 
be shed not simply for their good and in 



Hppen&ti 2) [155] 

revelation of the divine love, but for the 
remission of their sin. Because he died their 
sin would be forgiven, and therefore, be- 
fore dying, he must have taken upon him 
the load of their guilt, and in dying he must 
have expiated the same, according to the 
demands of everlasting law and according 
to the will of God. This good Shepherd, 
as he explained, would lay down his life 
for the sheep. He would give his life as a 
ransom for many. If, indeed, the sin of 
the human race gathered in one huge 
penalty and cloud of guilt upon the head 
of Jesus Christ, then it is no wonder that he 
suffered in Gethsemane and besought the 
Father that the cup should pass from him, 
nor that on the cross, as he realized in his 
heart the horror of the world's sin, he 
should have cried, '* My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" (Dr. John Wat- 
son, in " Doctrines of Grace," pp. 91, 92.) 



[is6] HppenMi B 

HppenMx B 

Ube ©tfense ot tbe Cross 

THE offense of the cross '' consists in 
two things: First it flashes upon the 
conscience the suspicion that by the very 
nature of the corporate racial sin — a sin 
which logically necessitated the sacrificial 
work of Calvary to redeem from it — all have 
become logical sharers in imposing such 
woes upon the Lord of Glory — a sin which 
is really deicide. This I grant is not apparent 
upon its face ; but upon reflection it will re- 
veal itself to be true. If we look into the 
moral necessities which moved Christ to 
come to his cross, we shall see to our hor- 
ror that it was necessary for Christ, in a 
deep sense, to die if we were to be spared 
the natural and just consequences of our 
sins. Seeing this we realize that we shared 
in the sin which made it necessary for Christ 
to die ; we shared in the sin of the race in its 
solidarity. We all constructively as we face 



HppenMi IE [157] 

the cross of Christ, become particeps crimi- 
nis in the murder on Calvary, the core of the 
essential human guilt. 

Then secondly, the cross reveals that the 
only way of escape from our part in this 
guilt, is by repudiating the sin principle in 
us by death to our self-will and pride, and 
trusting to the quickening power of the 
risen Lord to bring in the newness of life 
needed. This process puts the knife into 
our self-life; it threatens to destroy it, and 
we shrink from the pain and humiliation of 
it. But it is our only hope of regaining 
holiness. Thus the cross logically crucifies 
us and our sin. But the deep principle of 
moral death and resurrection involved in it 
— and it only reaches to the heart of any 
ethics deep enough to cure our deep dis- 
ease, and in lieu thereof establish soul- 
health — this only can put us on the course 
of true holiness. 



[15^] Hppen&ii jf 

HppenMi f 

jpalUng Uowar& tbe Cross 

THE late Mr. S. H. Hadley, of the New 
York Water Street Mission, once thus 
described in my hearing the manner of his 
conversion. He said that one day after a 
long debauch, and with several indictments 
for crime threatening him, he found himself 
sitting on the top of a liquor barrel in a sa- 
loon. In his dazed condition he fell into a 
mood almost of despair. All at once, how- 
ever, there came floating to his brain a re- 
membrance of the Cross of Calvary, and the 
Saviour who hung upon it. He felt strange- 
ly roused to try and go to that cross. Suit- 
ing his action to his materialized thought he 
climbed down from the barrel to " go " as 
he said ''to the cross.'' But as he did so, 
he fell headlong on the floor. " But," said 
Mr. Hadley, " I fell toward the cross, and 
Jesus picked me up. Glory to his name." 
Hadley's account of his falling and then ris- 



appen&ijc 3f [159] 

ing again had the whole philosophy of sal- 
vation in it. It is ever so, though the form 
of the work may variously express itself. 
In our helplessness and despair we fall, as 
it were, into death. But at that point the 
resurrection power lays hold of us, and we 
are surprisingly saved, saved as we never 
supposed we should be. 

The natural mind desires at the most, 
simply to mend itself — to patch up its 
brokenness — it needs reconstruction, new 
birth, organic and vital renewal. This can 
only come through so radical a process as 
resurrection after there has been a death. 
Anything short of this is like the struggle 
of the Roman prisoner to rid himself of 
the corpse of his fellow to whom, though 
dead, he has been chained; and he cries 
out : " Wretched man that I am, who shall 
deliver me out of the body of this death ? '' 
(Rom. 7 : 24.) Nothing can free him from 
such an incubus — such a weight of sin and 
corruption — but "the law of the Spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:2). This 



[i6o] Hppent)ii: f 

law, through a mystical process, works the 
disintegration of the sinner's carnal char- 
acter — its own corptis — and with it that 
which in corruption attaches itself to it; 
and then behold! by a miracle of divine 
grace, a new vitality and energy descending 
from the risen Lord, by the Holy Spirit, is 
born in its stead. Thereby the soul begins 
to live. It is at this point that the philoso- 
phy of the saving process as set forth in the 
Bible embraces the mystical element. It 
is an element which has in it a dual energy 
— an energy which on the one hand disin- 
tegrates and on the other reintegrates the 
seat of character. Somewhere below our 
power to trace its operation in the soul, the 
sin principle in us, through a form of dy- 
ing and living again, is brought into subjec- 
tion to the power of Christ. This process 
is deeper than any constructive power of 
the human will — deeper than any contriv- 
ance or scheme. It is vital as well as 
vicarious. 



JUN 4 1308 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: July 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



24i 



